
Book, £Q- 



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COFVRIGHT DEPOSIE 



»JOV n 1908 



' PSYCHOLOGY 

/ 

AN ELEMENTARY TEXT-BOOK 



BY 
HERMANN EBBINGHAUS 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HALLE; AUTHOR OF 

" ÜBER DAS GEDÄCHTNIS," " GRUNDZÜGE DER PSYCHOLOGIE," ETC. ; 

EDITOR OF THE " ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR PSYCHOLOGIE " 



TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY 
MAX MEYER 

PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 

1908 



^^<c> 



LIBRARY of ')OWGKtiSS I 
Two COD:ei' R'is>?!VSd i 

NOV 1/ IS08 I 

CopyriciP.t tntry { 
CLASS o> ' XXc, No, f 

COP! Oi. f 



Copyright, 1908, 
By D. C. Heath & Co. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

The present book is a free translation of Ebbinghaus's 
"Abriss der Psychologie" (Veit & Co., Leipzig, 1908). 
It is intended primarily to serve as a text-book for college 
students, but it should appeal also to the general reader. 
It will commend itself through its brevity and the excel- 
lent proportions of the material selected. The translator 
became interested in this book because of the fact that the 
author has succeeded in keeping entirely free of all fads, 
and has presented only that which is generally accepted 
by psychological science ; on the other hand, he has given 
to the highest constructive processes of the human mind, 
religion, art, and morality, the attention which they deserve 
because of their tremendous importance for human life. 

In some places the original text has been somewhat con- 
densed, particularly in the description of the anatomy of 
the nervous system in section 2. Section 4 of the original 
has been omitted, since its contents seemed to be suffi- 
^ ciently emphasized in the other sections of the book. The 
numbers of the following sections differ, therefore, from 
those of the German text. The translator regards this as 
insignificant, since his intention is not to aid his brother- 
psychologists in making themselves acquainted with Eb- 
binghaus's views, — for this end they are referred to the 
German original, — but to furnish an elementary text-book 
for the English-speaking student. Wherever there was any 
doubt as to the comprehensibility to the American student 
of any application or illustration of the laws discussed by 

iii 



iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

the author, the translator has unhesitatingly sacrificed the 
interest of the professional psychologist to that of the 
beginner-student. In a few places he has made slight ad- 
ditions to the original ; for instance, figures 7, 8, and 9 are 
his own property. But he has decided to abstain from 
enumerating all changes, since this would be of interest 
only to the professional psychologist. In no case are his 
additions opposed to the author's views. 

The questions added to each section are not exercises 
to be worked out by the student or puzzles to be solved by 
the general reader. They are intended to serve as an aid 
to the intelligent perusal of the book, by directing the 
reader's attention to the essential contents of each section. 

M. M. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

A Sketch of the History of Psychology .... 3 

CHAPTER I 

GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

§ I. Brain and Mind 27 

I 2. The Nervous System 30 

1. The Elements of the Nervous System ... 30 

2. The Architecture of the Nervous System ... 34 

3. The Anatomy of the Nervous System ... 38 

4. The Nervous System and Consciousness ... 41 
§ 3. Explanation of the Functional Relation between 

Brain and Mind 43 

1 . The Brain a Tool of the Mind 44 

2. The Brain an Objectified Conception of the Mind . 47 

CHAPTER n 

THE SPECIAL FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
A. The Elements of Mental Life 

§ 4. Sensation 50 

1 . The Newly Discovered Kinds of Sensation . . 50 

2. The Other Sensations 57 

3. Tempora and Spatial Attributes .... 65 

4. Sensation and Stimulus 69 

§ 5. Imagination 78 

§ 6. Feeling . .81 

§ 7. Willing 85 

y 



vi CONTENTS 

B. The Fundamental Laws of Mental Life 

PAGE 

§ 8. Attention 87 

§ 9. Memory 93 

§ 10. Practice 99 

§ II. Fatigue 102 

C. The Expressions of Mental Life 

§ 12. Perception and Movement 105 

§13. Thought and Movement 108 

CHAPTER III 

COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 
A. The Intellect 

§ 14. Perception 114 

1. Characteristics of Perception 114 

2. Illusions 120 

§ 15. Ideation . . . .123 

§ 16. Language 128 

1. Word Imagery . 128 

2. The Acquisition of Speech 130 

3. The Growth of Language . . . . . -135 

4. The Significance of Language 139 

§17. Judgment and Reason 142 

1. Coherent Thought 142 

2. The Self and the World 145 

3. Intelligence 148 

§ 18. Belief 152 

B. Affection and Conduct 

§ 19. Complications of Feeling . . . . . .162 

1. Feeling Dependent on Form and Content . .162 

2. Feeling Dependent on Association of Ideas . . 164 

3. Irradiation of Feeling 167 

§ 20. Emotions 168 

§ 21. Complications OF Willing 173 

§ 22. Freedom of Conduct .176 



CONTENTS vii 

CHAPTER IV 
HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

PAGE 

§ 23. Evils of Knowledge 183 

§ 24. Religion 189 

§ 25. Art 196 

§ 26. Morality 204 

Conclusion 210 

Index 213 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Multipolar Cell Body . . . 30 

Pyramidal Cell Body 31 

Dendrites of a Nerve Cell of the Cerebellum . . . .31 

Various Types of Cell Bodies 32 

Longitudinal Section of a Nerve Fiber with Stained Fibrils . 32 

Terminal Arborization of Optical Nerve Fibers • • • • 33 
Diagram of Nervous Architecture : Reflex Arches connected by a 

Low Nerve Center 36 

Diagram of Nervous Architecture: Lower Nerve Centers con- 
nected by a Higher Center . . . . . . .36 

Diagram of Nervous Architecture : Higher Nerve Centers con- 
nected by a Still Higher Center 37 

Frontal Section of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere • • • 39 

Sections of the Cerebral Cortex 40 

Localization of Peripheral Functions in the Cerebral Cortex . 41 

Color Pyramid 59 

"ABurnt Child fears the Fire" in 

Two Possibilities of Perception 120 

Varieties of Perception 121 

Visual and Kinesthetic Control of Voluntary Action : the Former 

Intact, the Latter Lost I7S 



PSYCHOLOGY 

AN ELEMENTARY TEXT-BOOK 



PSYCHOLOGY 

INTRODUCTION 

A SKETCH OP THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 

Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short. 
For thousands of years it has existed and has been grow- 
ing older ; but in the earlier part of this period it cannot 
boast of any continuous progress toward a riper and richer 
development. In the fourth century before our era that 
giant thinker, Aristotle, built it up into an edifice compar- 
ing very favorably with any other science of that time. 
But this edifice stood without undergoing any note- 
worthy changes or extensions, well into the eighteenth or 
even the nineteenth century. Only in recent times do we 
find an advance, at first slow but later increasing in 
rapidity, in the development of psychology. 

The general causes which checked the progress of this 
science and thus made it fall behind the others can readily 
be stated : — 

"The boundaries of the Soul you cannot find, though 
you pace off all its streets, so deep a foundation has it," 
runs a sentence of Heraclitus, and it hits the truth more 
fully than its author could ever have expected. The 
structures and functions of our mental life present the 
greatest difficulties to scientific investigation, greater even 
than those presented by the phenomena, in many respects 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION 

similar, of the bodily life of the higher organisms. These 
structures and processes change so unceasingly, are so 
fleeting, so enormously complex, and dependent on so 
many factors hidden yet undoubtedly influential, that it is 
difficult even to seize upon them and describe their true 
substance, still more difficult to gain an insight into their 
causfti connections and to understand their significance. 
We are just now beginning to recognize the full force of 
these difficulties. Wherever in recent years research in 
any of the many branches of psychology has made any 
considerable advance, — as in vision, audition, memory, 
judgment, — the first conclusion reached by all investigators 
has been, that matters are incomparably finer and richer 
and fuller of meaning than even a keen fancy would pre- 
viously have been able to imagine. 

There is, besides, a second obstacle. However difficult 
it may be to investigate the nature and causal connections 
of mental phenomena, everybody has a superficial knowl- 
edge of their external manifestations. Long before these 
phenomena were considered scientifically, it was necessary 
for practical human intercourse and for the understanding 
of human character, that language should give names to 
the most important mental complexes occurring in the 
various situations of daily life, such as judgment, attention, 
imagination, passion, conscience, and so forth ; and we are 
constantly using these names as if everybody understood 
them perfectly. What is customary and commonplace 
comes to be self-evident to us and is quietly accepted ; it 
arouses no wonder at its strangeness, no curiosity which 
might lead us to examine it more closely. Popular psychol- 
ogy remains unconscious of the fact that there are mysteries 
and problems in these complexes. It loses sight of the 
complications because of the simplicity of the names. 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 5 

When it has arranged the mental phenomena in any 
particular case under the familiar designations, and has 
perhaps said that some one has ** paid attention," or has 
" given free rein to his imagination," it considers the whole 
matter explained and the subject closed. 

Still a third condition has retarded the advance of 
psychology, and will probably long continue to do so. 
Toward some of its weightiest problems it is almost im- 
possible for us to be open-minded ; we take too much 
practical interest in arriving at one answer rather than the 
other. King Frederick William I was not the only person 
who could be persuaded of the danger of the doctrine that 
every mental condition is governed by fixed law, and that 
in consequence all of our actions are fully determined — 
a doctrine fundamental to serious psychological research. 
He believed that such a teaching undermined the foun- 
dations of order in state and army, and that according to 
it he would no longer be justified in punishing deserters 
from his tall grenadiers. There are even to-day numerous 
thinkers who brand such a doctrine dangerous. They 
believe that it destroys all possibility of punishment and 
reward, makes all education, admonition, and advice mean- 
ingless, paralyzes our action, and must because of all these 
consequences be rejected. 

In a similar way the discussion of other fundamental 
questions, such as the real nature of mind, the relation of 
mind and body in life and death, becomes prejudiced and 
confused on account of their connection with the deepest- 
rooted sentiments and longings of the human race. In 
recent years this has been the case especially in connection 
with the question of the evolution of mental life from its 
lower forms in the animals to its higher in man. What 
ought to be taught and investigated on its own merits as 



6 INTRODUCTION 

pure scientific theory, as the probable meaning of expe- 
rienced facts, comes to be a matter of belief and good 
character, or is considered a sign of courageous independ- 
ence of spirit and superiority to superstition and tradi- 
tional prejudice. All of this is quite comprehensible when 
we consider the enormous practical importance of the 
questions at issue. Yet such an attitude will scarcely be 
of much help in finding answers most correct from a purely 
objective standpoint; it rather discourages the advance 
of research along definite lines. 

Nevertheless, as we have stated in the beginning, 
psychology has now entered upon a positive development. 
What favorable circumstances have made it possible to 
overcome, at least in part, the peculiar opposing difficul- 
ties.? 

There are many ; but in the end they all lead back to 
one : the rise and progress of natural science since the 
sixteenth century. However, this has made itself felt in 
two quite different ways ; the force of the first wave was 
increased to its full magnitude by a closely following 
second wave. First, natural science served — if we over- 
look the hasty identification of mind and matter which 
had its origin in natural science — as a shining and fruit- 
ful example to psychology. It suggested conceptions of 
mental life analogous to those conceptions which had 
been found to make material processes comprehensible. 
It led to attempts at employing methods similar to those 
which had proved valuable in natural science. This in- 
fluence was especially active in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, and lasted into the nineteenth. 
Later a more direct influence began to make itself felt: 
an actual invasion by natural science of special provinces 
of psychology. Natural science, in the course of its 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 7 

further development, was led at many points into investi- 
gations which lay as well in the sphere of psychology as 
in its own prescribed paths. When it attacked them and 
worked out beautiful solutions for them, psychologists also 
received a strong impulse not to stand aside, but to take 
up those problems themselves and pursue them independ- 
ently for their own quite different purposes. So it was in 
the nineteenth century, especially in its second half. 

Let us discuss more in detail a few particular results of 
this twofold general influence. 

As the first important fruit of that indirect advance- 
ment through analogy, may be instanced the idea of the 
absolute and inevitable subjection to law of all mental pro- 
cesses, which I have just said forms the foundation of all 
serious psychological work. This was a familiar idea as 
far back as the later period of ancient philosophy, but 
was afterwards repudiated by the theological representa- 
tives of philosophy and psychology in the Middle Ages. 
To be sure, they always felt more or less attracted toward 
this view on account of the doctrine of the omnipotence 
and omniscience of God. For if God is almighty, then 
there can be no event in the future, either in the outer 
world or in the heart of man, which does not depend 
entirely on him; and if he is also all-knowing, or if in 
the eternity of God the human differences of past and 
future altogether disappear, then the future must be 
already known to God, and in consequence be fixed un- 
alterably. But in spite of this argument, these medieval 
thinkers felt bound to affirm a spiritual freedom (that is, a 
merely partial determination) under the pressure of popu- 
lar psychological and ethical thought and in consequence 
of their contemplation of the holiness and justice of God. 
For how could God have willed the sinful deeds of man, 



8 INTRODUCTION 

or have caused them, even indirectly ? Or how could he 
punish men for doing things which they were compelled 
to do by unalterable laws which he himself had made ? 
Although, so it was argued, man had his origin in God, 
he was nevertheless not absolutely bound by the divine 
within him ; he could turn away from it voluntarily, that 
is, causelessly. 

The influence of the rising natural science led to the 
opposite answer to the question as to whether the basis of 
our responsibility is spiritual freedom or universal causa- 
tion. Hobbes and Spinoza became the champions of 
universal causation, presenting their answer to the ques- 
tion with a clearness and incisiveness imposing even 
to-day. Leibniz too adopted it, but took care not to 
offend those holding to the other view. It has never 
been lost again from psychology. These men teach that 
the phenomena of the mental life are in one respect 
exactly like those of external nature, with which they 
are indeed closely connected : at any moment they are 
definitely fixed through their causes, and cannot be other- 
wise than as we actually find them. Freedom of action 
in the sense of causelessness is an empty concept. It 
follows from this that one can properly mean by freedom 
of action only that there is no compulsion from without, 
that the action of a thing or being is determined only by 
its own nature, its own indwelling properties. We say of 
water that it flows along freely if it is not checked by 
rocks or dams ; or of a horse, that it runs about freely, if 
it is not tied up or locked in a stall. We can in this sense 
call the good deeds of a person or his living together with 
other people his own free action, if it springs from his 
own deliberations and desires and is not coerced by force 
or threats. Nevertheless all these manifestations, the 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY Q 

flowing, the running about, and also the good actions, are 
alike the regular effects of definite causes. 

What constantly prevents men from recognizing this 
causality and leads them to a belief in a misinterpreted 
freedom, is solely their ignorance. Out of the multitude 
of motives for their actions they see, in most cases, only a 
single one ; and if the action which takes place does not 
correspond with it, they are convinced that the decision 
occurred without cause. " A top," says Hobbes, " which 
is spun by boys and runs about, first towards one wall 
then towards another, would think, if it perceived its own 
motion, that it moved about by the exercise of its own 
will, unless it happened to know what was spinning it." 
In the same way people apply for a job or try to make a 
bargain and think that they do this by their own wills ; 
they do not see the whips by which their wills are driven. 
In order to understand correctly the thoughts and im- 
pulses of man, we must treat them just as we treat mate- 
rial bodies, or as we treat the lines and points of mathe- 
matics. The pretended dangers of such a conception of 
things disappear, as soon as we face them without preju- 
dice and try to understand them. The conception may be 
misused, especially by people of immature mind, but " for 
whatever purpose truth may be used, true still remains 
true," and the question is not, " what is fit to be preached, 
but what is true." 

Supported by this view of a universal determination of 
mental activity, there has arisen the idea of a special deter- 
mination, likewise copied from natural science. The com- 
ing and going of our thoughts is ordinarily considered as 
an unregulated play, defying calculation. That order rules 
even here, that the train of thought is governed by simi- 
larity to the mental states just present, or by a previous 



lO INTRODUCTION 

connection with these mental states, was clearly recognized 
and expressed even in the times of Plato and Aristotle. 
Yet this had remained merely the knowledge of a curi- 
osity ; no theoretical use whatever was made of it. Now 
it was brought into connection with newly recognized 
physical facts. This determination of the trains of thought 
depends, according to Hobbes, on the fact that our ideas 
are connected with material movements within the nerves 
and other organs, and that these movements, when once 
started, cannot immediately cease, but must gradually be 
consumed by resistance. The laws of association are to 
him in the spiritual sphere, what the law of inertia is in 
the physical. To Hume, a hundred years later, they de- 
pend on a kind of attraction, an idea suggested by Newton's 
law of gravitation. And since inertia and attraction had 
been recognized as the most important and fundamental 
causes of material processes, it was a natural thing to re- 
gard the laws of association, which had been compared 
with them, as the fundamental phenomena of mental life, 
and to derive from them as manifold and important conse- 
quences as had been done in the case of the physical world. 
So arose the English associational psychology. It at- 
tempted to explain the traditional faculties of the mind, 
such as memory, imagination, judgment, and also the 
results of their combined activity (for instance, the con- 
sciousness of self and of the outer world) as natural and, 
so to speak, mechanical effects of the laws of association 
governing the processes of mind. No doubt this attempt, 
appearing also in a somewhat different form in the sensa- 
tionalism of France, represents, in spite of its one-sidedness, 
a very great advance over the psychology of the past. 

Just as associationism corresponds to the explanatory 
natural science of Galileo and Newton, the empirical psy- 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY II 

chology of the German enlightenment corresponds to the 
descriptive science of Linnaeus and Buffon. But aside 
from a few exceptions, such as Tetens, its work must be 
regarded as a failure. To be sure, its intention is also to 
explain mental phenomena, to comprehend them first by 
careful introspection, and then to find by analysis the sim- 
plest faculties from which they have sprung. But its actual 
accomplishment does not go beyond a mere description of 
the occurrences offering themselves to first observation. 
And the results reached teach impressively that description 
is an unfruitful task unless, as sometimes of late, it is made 
to include also explanation. The numerous different ex- 
pressions of mind, already distinguished by popular psy- 
chology, are only arranged in certain groups beside and 
above each other, and the explanation consists in presenting 
each expression as the effect of a special faculty. Thus 
we obtain a great multitude of complicated mental per- 
formances, inwardly related to each other, which are made 
to stand on a footing of equality and perfect independence, 
for example, perception, judgment, reason, imagination, and 
also abstraction, wit, symbolism, and so on. Like mere 
little homimculi in the large homo^ they act now in har- 
mony, now in opposition. The poetic faculty, for example, 
" is a cooperation of imagination with judgment." In con- 
nection with reason, imagination produces foresight. " Wit 
often does harm to judgment, and leads it to false verdicts. 
. . . Judgment must therefore be constantly on its guard 
against wit." The advancement in this case did not result 
from a development of these views, but from their over- 
throw. But the opposition raised was turned also against 
associationism. 

Of the defects of associationism this is the greatest : it 
gives no explanation of the phenomenon of attention. The 



12 INTRODUCTION 

peculiar fact that of a great number of conscious im- 
pressions or ideas simultaneously offered to the mind, only 
a few can ever be carried through and become effective, 
is not to be explained on the basis of the associative con- 
nection of ideas. The associationists pass over this im- 
portant fact either with complete silence or with a very 
insufficient treatment, and thus put a weapon into the 
hands of their opponents. The mind seems, in fact, in the 
case of attention to mock at all attempts at explanation 
and to prove itself, quite in the sense of the popular con- 
ception, a reality separable from its own contents — stand- 
ing face to face with them, and treating them capriciously 
now in one way, now in another. 

It is the chief service of Herbart to have recognized a 
weak point here, and to have attempted to remedy it. 
** The regularity of the mental life," he is convinced, " is 
fully equal to that of the movements of the stars." Phys- 
ical analogies guide him in his attempt at explanation. He 
regards ideas as mutually repellent structures, or, as it 
were, elastic bodies, assigned to a space of limited capacity, 
forced together and made smaller by mutual pressure, but 
never annihilating each other. If several ideas are si- 
multaneously called forth, they become conflicting forces, 
on account of the unity of the mind, in which they are com- 
pelled to be together, and on account of the opposition 
which exists among them. In this struggle their clear- 
ness suffers and their influence on consciousness is im- 
paired. However, they do not perish, but become, to the 
extent that they suffer, latent forces. 

As soon as the opposing factors lose their strength these 
latent forces emerge again into full consciousness out of 
the obscurity in which they have been buried. After 
making some further simple assumptions as to the strength 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 1 3 

of these interferences, Herbart concludes that two ideas 
are sufficient to crowd a third completely out of conscious- 
ness. To his great satisfaction he thus gains from the 
consideration of a simple mechanism " a solution of the 
most general of all psychological problems." By this 
problem he means the fact that of all the knowing, think- 
ing, wishing, which at any moment might be brought 
about by the proper causes, only a very small part plays 
a significant role, while the rest is not really lost. That 
is, he means the fact of attention. But this principle of 
the mutual interference of ideas is not the only one he 
uses. The second principle upon which his theory is 
based is that of association. With these two weapons he 
takes up the fight against the faculty psychology, and 
carries it to a successful end. He believes that all those 
activities traditionally placed side by side, even feeling 
and desire, can be made comprehensible as results of the 
mechanics of ideas. 

Yet Herbart seeks by still another means to "bring 
about a mental science similar to the natural science : . . . 
by quantitative methods and the application of mathe- 
matics." We find here and there before this time the idea 
of advancing psychology by such means. The brilliant 
results produced in natural science by measurement and 
calculation readily suggested the idea that something simi- 
lar might be done for psychology. But the philosophical 
thinkers interested in psychology did not find the right 
tools; they justified their inability by asserting that such 
an undertaking was impossible. The most famous is the 
denial by Kant that mathematics can be applied to the 
inner mental life and its laws, because time, within which 
the mental phenomena would have to be represented as 
occurring, has but one dimension. To be sure Herbart 



14 INTRODUCTION 

is not actually the pioneer in this field : he never gave a 
single example of how a measurement of a mental process 
was to be taken. However, he at least recognized that 
the mental life is open to quantitative treatment, not only 
with regard to time, but also in other respects. And in 
attempting to solve problems quantitatively, through the 
statement of numerical assumptions and their logical de- 
velopment to their consequences, he so strongly empha- 
sized a side of the matter which had previously been wholly 
neglected, that more correct ways of clearing it up were 
soon found. 

A strong and enduring influence was exerted by Her- 
bart, yet the further progress of psychology did not occur 
along the path marked out by him. Many of his general 
assumptions, particularly those upon which his calculations 
are based, were entirely too vague to appear probable 
merely because a few of their consequences agreed 
with experience. Besides, a strong opposition had arisen 
against the intellectualism supported by him and by the 
associationists, — against the almost exclusive regard for 
the thinking and knowing activities of the mind. If 
mental life is really nothing but a machinery of ideas, a co- 
operation and opposition of masses of ideas, what is such 
a thing as religion ? Is it a small complex of true and 
rational ideas, to which is added a large complex of super- 
stitious fables, invented, or at any rate cultivated, by 
priests and princes, in order to keep men under their au- 
thority ? So low a valuation of religion is scarcely pos- 
sible. Or, what is art ? Are the lyric poems of Goethe 
or the symphonies of Beethoven really only institutions for 
the conveyance of knowledge through the senses, as the 
name esthetics indicates, or for the unsuspected instilling 
of ideas which make men more virtuous or more patriotic 1 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY I 5 

Certainly one thing which stands in the center of all 
mental life seems entirely incomprehensible as the result 
of a mere mechanics of ideas, that is, that unity of mind 
without which we could not speak of personality, of 
character, of individuality, without which we could not call 
one man haughty and another humble, one good and 
another bad, one noble and another base. Because of this 
weakness in the theory numerous great thinkers, Rousseau, 
Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, raised their voices to insist 
upon the significance of the life of feeling and will as well 
as of the life of ideas, even to give to the former the first 
place, as the expression of mind's most real inner being. 
Thus intellectualism was opposed by what we now call 
voluntarism. 

This transferring of the conceptions of natural science 
to psychological research, in spite of the mighty impulse 
it gave to psychology, was not without its disadvantage. 
The first brilliant advances in natural science were in the 
province of physics, especially of mechanics. It is no 
wonder, then, that psychologists, in their gropings after 
something similar, turned first to mechanical-physical pro- 
cesses. Inertia, attraction, and repulsion, as we have seen, 
aggregation and chemical combination, were the categories 
with which they worked. No wonder, either, that facts 
were often distorted and their comprehension made dif- 
ficult. For if mind is a machine, it is certainly not such 
a machine as even the most ingeniously constructed clock 
or as a galvanic battery. It is bound up with the organic 
body, especially with the nervous system, and on the 
structure and functions of the nervous system its own ex- 
istence and activity somehow depend. So, if one wishes 
to use material analogies and to make them fruitful for 
the comprehension of mental structures, they must be 



l6 INTRODUCTION 

taken from organic life, from biology rather than from 
physics and chemistry. We may find phenomena com- 
parable to individuality and character, to the mind's feel- 
ing and willing, in the unitary existence of every plant 
and animal organism, in the peculiar determination of its 
instinct of life and in the many special branches into which 
this instinct ceaselessly unfolds. And indeed the specific- 
ally mechanical categories gradually disappeared from psy- 
chology during the nineteenth century, and made way for 
the biological categories — reflex, inhibition, practice, as- 
similation, adaptation, and so on. Especially that great 
acquisition of modern biology, the theory of evolution, 
was at once seized upon by psychologists, and was util- 
ized for gaining an understanding of the processes as well 
in the mind of the individual as in human society. 

But side by side with such advances, springing from 
analogy and adaptation, there arose in the nineteenth cen- 
tury another and more direct influence of natural science, 
as previously mentioned. In its natural progress scientific 
research came to touch upon psychological problems at 
several points, and since it laid hold of them and followed 
them out for its own ends, it immediately became a pioneer 
for psychology. 

The first and at the same time the strongest of these 
impulses came from the advance of the physiology of the 
senses. In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century 
remarkably active and fruitful work in this field began. 
Physiologists and physicists vied with each other in accu- 
rate study of the structure and functions of sense organs. 
Naturally they were not able to stop at the material func- 
tions in which they were most directly interested. They 
could not forbear to draw into the circle of their investi- 
gations those mental functions mediated by the physiolog- 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 17 

ical functions and explainable on a physiological basis. 
The eye, especially, attracted scores of investigators, 
both because it is very richly endowed with dioptric and 
mechanical auxiliary apparatus and because it is particu- 
larly important on account of the delicacy and diversity of 
its functions. Yet cutaneous sensations and hearing were 
not neglected. 

Johannes Müller, E. H. Weber, Brewster, and above 
all — especially versatile, far-seeing, and inventive — the 
somewhat younger Helmholtz, are only a few of the most 
noteworthy representatives of this class of research. They 
brought to psychology results such as it had never known 
before — results resting on well-conceived and original 
questions as to the nature of things, and on skillful 
attempts at arranging the circumstances for an answer, 
that is, on experiment and when possible on exact measure- 
ment of the effects and their causes. When Weber in 
1828 had the seemingly petty curiosity to want to know 
at what distances apart two touches on the skin could be 
just perceived as two, and later, with what accuracy he 
could distinguish between two weights laid on the hand, 
or how he could distinguish between the perception received 
through the muscles in lifting the weights and the percep- 
tion received through the skin, his curiosity resulted in 
more real progress in psychology than all the combined 
distinctions, definitions, and classifications of the time from 
Aristotle to Hobbes. The surprising discovery of hitherto 
unknown sense organs, the muscles and the semicircular ca- 
nals, was made at that time, although not thoroughly verified 
until later. That discovery meant not only an increase of 
knowledge, but also a widening of the horizon, since the 
most conspicuous peculiarity of these organs is that they 
do not, like the others, bring to our consciousness external 



1 8 INTRODUCTION 

stimuli in the ordinary sense, but processes on the inside 
of the body. 

One result in particular of these investigations in the 
physiology of the senses became the starting point of 
a strong new movement. The course of biology in the 
second quarter of the nineteenth century was toward 
methodical and exact study of empirical facts, and away 
from speculation in the philosophy of nature. But for 
some time this exact study and this speculation were often 
to be found combined in the same men. Fechner was 
one of these. On the one hand he was a speculative phi- 
losopher, a follower of Schelling's philosophy of nature, a 
disciple of Herbart in his attempt at applying mathematics 
to psychology. So we find him speculating as to what 
might be the exact relations between body and soul, seek- 
ing for a mathematical formulation of the dependence of 
the corresponding mental and nervous processes. One 
October morning in 1850, while lying in bed, he conceived 
a formula which seemed to him plausible. In spite of 
this speculative tendency he was a physicist of scientific 
exactness, accustomed to demand a support of facts for 
such plausible formulas, ready to attack problems not only 
with his mind, but also with his hands. In following up 
his speculations he came across some of the results of the 
work of Weber. By the use of more exact methods and 
by long-continued series of experiments he carried Weber's 
investigations farther, at the same time utilizing the obser- 
vations of others to which no one had before paid any 
attention. He succeeded in formulating the first mathe- 
matical law of mental life, Weber's law as he called it, 
according to which an increase of the external stimulus in 
geometrical progression corresponds to the increase of 
the mental process in arithmetical progression. (We shall 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 19 

discuss this law in § 4.) He classed together all of 
his speculations, investigations, formulations, and con- 
clusions as a new branch of knowledge, Psychophysics, 
" the scientific doctrine of the relations obtaining between 
body and mind." 

Fechner's work called forth numberless books and 
articles, confirming, opposing, discussing it, or carrying its 
conclusions still further. The chief question which they 
discussed, the question whether the law formulated by 
Fechner was correct or not, has gradually lost its impor- 
tance, and made way for other problems. Quite aside 
from this question, which originally formed the center of 
interest, Fechner's work has made itself felt in three dif- 
ferent Ways. Herbart's mathematical fiction of the combat 
among ideas had made such an impression upon the 
thinkers of the time, that — incredible as it may seem — 
as late as 1852 Lotze confessed that he would prefer it to 
formulas found by experiment. For this fiction Fechner 
substituted a scientific law derived from actual measure- 
ment of physical forces. Further, he gave to these facts 
their proper place in a broad system, showed their signifi- 
cance for the deepest psychological problems, and thus 
compelled even those psychologists who had affiliated 
themselves with philosophy and had previously remained 
unaffected by the physiology of the senses, to take notice 
of the new movement in their science. And finally, he 
worked out a methodical procedure for all psychophysical 
investigations, which was far superior to the methods then 
employed by psychologists and which continues to be of 
great use for the study of sensation and perception. 

At about the same time, in the sixties, psychology 
received a third kind of impulse. Although weaker than 
the two just mentioned, it contributed not a little toward 



20 INTRODUCTION 

increasing the number of psychological problems to which 
experimental methods could be applied. 

In the year 1796 the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, 
director of the Greenwich observatory, noticed that the 
transits recorded by his assistant, Kinnebrook, showed a 
gradually increasing difference from his own, finally 
amounting to almost a full second. He suspected his 
assistant of having deviated from the prescribed method 
of observation, the so-called eye and ear method, and of 
having substituted some unreliable method of his own. 
He admonished the young man to return to the correct 
method and do better in the future. But his admonition 
was in vain, and he found himself obliged to part with his 
otherwise satisfactory assistant. Kinnebrook lost his 
position on account of the deficient psychological knowl- 
edge of his time. It was not until two decades later that 
Bessel discovered that such differences between the results 
of observations by different individuals were quite general 
and normal, and that in Kinnebrook's case they were only 
unusually great. They depend on the manner of giving 
attention to both the sound of the pendulum and the sight 
of the moving star, which naturally differs in different 
individuals. 

At first this question of the so-called personal equation 
remained a purely practical astronomical problem. But a 
few decades later it gave rise to two classes of investiga- 
tions of psychological importance, both of the experimental 
kind. The first was an investigation of a comparatively 
simple problem — the duration of the mental processes. 
Among such processes measured were the simple percep- 
tion, the discrimination of several perceptions, the simple 
reaction to them, the reproduction of any suggested idea, 
the reproduction of a specific suggested idea, and so forth. 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 21 

Not only was the duration of these processes studied, 
but also their dependence on differences of stimulation, the 
accompanying circumstances, the individual differences, 
the subject's trend of thought. The second class of inves- 
tigations was concerned with the more complex mental 
processes of attending and willing. As examples may be 
mentioned inquiries into the attention of a person confronted 
by a multitude of impressions, a study of the order in which 
the several impressions are perceived, a determination of 
the largest number of impressions perceptible as a mental 
unit, and research into the causal relations between ideas 
and actions. 

A more recent contribution of natural science to the ad- 
vancement of psychology has come from investigations in 
the physiology and pathology of the central nervous system 
since the discovery about 1870 of the so-called speech 
center by Broca, and of the motor areas of the brain cortex 
by Fritsch and Hitzig. Some have placed a rather low 
value on this contribution and, noticing the errors and im- 
mature conceptions of this or that investigator, have arrived 
at the conclusion that psychology can learn nothing worth 
mentioning from the work of these men. This, it seems 
to me, is a great mistake. 

Quite aside from innumerable details, psychology owes 
to the investigations made in recent years concerning the 
physiology of the brain two fundamental conceptions. In 
the first place it has come to be generally recognized that 
the search of centuries for the exact seat of the soul in 
the brain — for the point where mind and body come into 
interaction — is without an object. There is no seat of 
the soul in this sense; the brain is the embodiment of 
almost absolute decentralization. Our mind receives the 
impressions of the external world by means of widely sep- 



22 INTRODUCTION 

arated parts of the brain, as different sensations, according 
to the peripheral organs stimulated. And our mind con- 
trols our actions by means of widely separated parts of 
the brain according to the local differences of the muscle 
groups which are called into action. All the parts of the 
brain are connected, but they function in relative independ- 
ence, without being controlled from a single point. Now, 
it is clear that insight into this fact is of no little signifi- 
cance for our conception of the nature of mind. 

In the second place it is only through the work of these 
neurologists that psychologists have come to realize how 
enormously complicated are even those mental functions 
which have always been regarded as comparatively simple. 
That the speech function, for example, involves conscious- 
ness of sound, of movement, and sometimes of sight, may 
be recognized immediately, and has been recognized. That 
our images of things are directly nothing but revived sense 
impressions of various kinds, visual, auditory, olfactory, 
and so on, and that our skill in handling things depends 
upon our experience obtained through running our fingers 
over them, is also recognized. But that all these images 
are more than abstractions, that they have a concrete sig- 
nificance even though the subject may not be aware of 
them, has been recognized only after the study of patho- 
logical cases, where, in consequence of peculiar lesions of 
the brain a dissociation has occurred among those factors 
which usually work together harmoniously, and where some 
of them are perhaps entirely lost. It was not until these 
pathological facts were known that psychology was able 
to give a definite formulation to certain of its problems. 
It then became clear that many former problems which 
took their origin from those popular simplifications, will, 
judgment, memory, or from the seeming simplicity of ideas 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 



23 



and movements, were perfect nonsense, considering the 
actual complexity of the facts. Now, after having learned 
how to formulate its problems, psychology can at last hope 
to understand the phenomena of mental life. 

The study of the brain has also had an indirect influ- 
ence upon psychology through the strong impulse which 
it gave to psychiatry. The knowledge gained in the study 
of the abnormal mind gave a new insight into the pro- 
cesses of the normal mind. And since psychiatrists most 
often came into contact with the highly complex mental 
states, such as emotion, intelligence, self-consciousness, the 
impulses which they gave to psychology were a happy 
supplement to those other influences which concerned 
chiefly sensation and perception. 

During the last decades of the nineteenth century all 
these buds of a new psychology were — first by Wundt— - 
grafted on the old stem and so united into an harmonious 
whole. They have rejuvenated the apparently dying tree 
and brought about a strong new growth. The psychology 
of the text-book and the lecture room has become a differ- 
ent science. The most conspicuous sign of this new con- 
ception of the science of the mind is the establishment of 
numerous laboratories exclusively devoted to psychological 
research. 

In earlier times psychology was but the handmaid of 
other interests. Psychological research was not an end in 
itself, but a useful or necessary means to higher ends. 
Usually it was a branch or a servant of philosophy. Men 
took it up particularly in order to understand the founda- 
tions of knowledge, or how our conceptions of the natural 
world originated, and this again in order to draw meta- 
physical or ethical conclusions, to settle the controversy 



24 INTRODUCTION 

between idealism and materialism, to answer the question 
as to the relation of body and mind, to derive rules for a 
rational conduct of life, often also with the mere purpose 
of confirming views springing from some other source. 
Others took up the study of psychology with a practical 
aim, for example, in order to find out how to make the 
most of their lives, or how to improve their memories. It 
is, to be sure, greatly to be hoped that psychology will 
not entirely lose its connection with philosophy, as natural 
science has unfortunately done. At no time, indeed, has 
the practical importance of psychology, its great usefulness 
in education, psychiatry, law, language, religion, art, been 
more strongly felt, or given rise to more numerous investi- 
gations than at present. But it is now recognized that, 
here as elsewhere, it is more fruitful for the true and last- 
ing advancement of philosophical ends, instead of always 
thinking of advancing them, to forget them for the time, 
and to work on the preliminary problems as if these pre- 
liminary problems were the only ones existing. And so 
psychology, formerly a mere means to an end, has come 
to be regarded as a special science, to which a man can 
well afford to give his full time and energy. 

A few data may illustrate what we have just said. Un- 
til the last decades of the nineteenth century psychology 
has not been able to support a journal of its own. A few 
attempts in this direction were made in the eighteenth 
century, when two psychological periodicals were started ; 
but neither published more than a few volumes. Even in 
the middle of the last century magazine articles of psycho- 
logical content were rare enough and appeared only in 
philosophical, physiological, or physical journals. During 
the last thirty years a complete revolution has taken place 
in this respect, more remarkable than in any other branch 



HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 25 

of science. First at longer intervals, then in quick 
succession, numerous purely psychological journals were 
founded in the principal civilized countries, of which none 
thus far has been compelled to retire on account of lack 
of either contributors or readers. We count at present at 
least fifteen, six of them in German, four in English, three 
in French, one in the Italian language, and one represent- 
ing the Scandinavian peoples. And there is an equal 
number of periodical publications of single investigators 
and institutions, and also numerous writings of psycholog- 
ical importance published in philosophical, physiolog- 
ical, psychiatrical, pedagogical, criminological, and other 
journals. 

QUESTIONS 

f\. How old is the science of psychology ? 

2. What do you know about its early growth ? 

3. What are the difficulties besetting psychology ? 

4. What is the origin of popular psychology ? 

5. Why is psychology so much hampered by prejudice ? 

6. State the two ways in which psychology has been influenced by 
natural science. 

7. How was psychology influenced by medieval theology ? 

8. Who were the opponents of theological psychology ? 

9. What does freedom of action mean ? 

10. What kind of ignorance is the cause of the belief in absolute 
freedom ? 

1 1 . How did the associational psychology originate ? 

12. What is meant by the faculty psychology ? 

13. What does psychology owe to Herbart ? 

14. What is voluntarism ? 

15. Why are mechanical explanations of mental life inadequate ? 

16. From which science can psychology obtain the most fruitful 
analogies ? 

17. Which science gave in the earlier part of the nineteenth century 
the strongest direct impulse to psychology ? 



26 INTRODUCTION 

1 8. What is psychophysics and who is its author ? 

19. What is meant by the personal equation ? 

20. What experimental investigations were suggested by the per- 
sonal equation ? 

21. How did the study of the physiology of the brain influence 
psychology ? 

22. Is psychology a special science ? 



CHAPTER I 

GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

§ I. Brain and Mind 

As we all know, the processes of our mental life stand 
in the closest relationship with the functions of the nervous 
system, especially with the functions of its highest organ, 
the brain. Local anemia, that is, a lack of blood in the 
brain, causes fainting, a cessation of consciousness ; on the 
other hand, during mental work the blood pressure in the 
brain is higher than usual and metabolism is increased. 
Narcotic or poisonous drugs, as alcohol, caffein, and 
morphine, which influence mental activity, do this by 
means of their effect on the nervous system. Aside from 
such experiences, there are two special groups of facts 
upon which our knowledge of this relationship is based. 

First the dependence of mental development on the de- 
velopment of the nervous system. This is most conspicuous 
when man and animals are compared. It is somewhat ob- 
scured, however, by the relation of the size of the brain to 
the size of the animal. The larger animal has as a rule the 
larger brain. Therefore the brain of man can be compared 
only with the brain of such animals as are of nearly the same 
size. When such a comparison is made, man is found to be 
no less superior in nervous organization than in intelligence. 
His brain is about three times as heavy, absolutely and 
relatively, as that of the animals most nearly approaching 
him, the anthropoid apes ; eight to ten times as heavy as 

27 



28 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

the brain of the most intelligent animals lower down in the 
scale, for instance large dogs. Similar relations between 
brain weight and intelligence are found in the human race 
itself. Of course, we cannot expect that this relation will 
always be found in a comparison of only two individuals. 
The conditions are too complex for such a regularity to 
exist ; but it is easily demonstrated when averages of groups 
of intelligent and unintelligent men are compared. We 
do not expect, either, that in every individual case phys- 
ical strength is exactly proportional to the weight of the 
muscles, although no one doubts that strength depends on 
the weight of the muscles. 

The second of the facts upon which our knowledge of 
the relationship between mental life and nervous function 
is based, consists in the parallel effects of disturbances of 
their normal condition. Diseases or injuries of the br-ain 
are, as a rule, accompanied by disturbances of the mental 
life. On the other hand, mental disturbances can often 
be traced to lesions or structural modifications in the brain. 
This cannot be done in every case ; but the actual connec- 
tion is none the less certain. It is often very difficult 
to decide whether or not any mental abnormality exists. 
Expert psychiatrists have for weeks at a time observed 
men suspected of mental disease without being able to 
pronounce judgment. Equally difficult is the discovery of 
material changes in the brain and its elements. Much 
progress has been made in recent times in this respect ; 
but it is still far from easy to recognize the more delicate 
changes in nervous structure resulting from disease. Cer- 
tain abnormalities may never become directly visible al- 
though they involve disturbances of function, for instance, 
abnormalities in the nutrition of the nervous elements or 
changes in their normal sensitivity. No wonder, then. 



BRAIN AND MIND 29 

that for many mental diseases, as hysteria, corresponding 
material lesions are not yet known. But the correctness of 
our thesis is so strongly secured by the enormous number 
of cases in which it has been demonstrated, that no one 
doubts that it applies also to those cases in which, often 
for good reasons, its demonstration has thus far been 
impossible. 

Of much importance is the particular form of this rela- 
tionship between brain function and mental life. Popular 
thought attributes the chief classes of total mental activ- 
ity to special parts of the brain. Judgment is thought to 
have its seat behind the thinker's high forehead. The 
occipital part of the brain is, according to the medieval 
philosophers, the organ of memory. And so Gall's phre- 
nology met with ready acceptance from the public at large, 
which was delighted to learn that musical ability, mathe- 
matical talent, religious sentiment, egotism and altruism, 
and many other character traits had their special organs 
in the brain. But anatomists and physiologists have not 
been able to admit the plausibility of this doctrine. 

Yet popular thought has, on the other hand, always em- 
phasized the unity of mind. Those who regard its unity 
as the chief characteristic of mind have for centuries 
sought for the single point in the brain where the mind 
can be said to have its seat. If it were distributed all 
through the brain, would it not be possible to cut the mind 
into pieces by simply cutting the brain .? 

That both these views of the relation between brain and 
mind are inadmissible has become certain. Since about 
forty years ago the truth in this matter has been known. 
But to understand it clearly it is necessary first to familiar- 
ize ourselves with the construction of the nervous system. 



30 



GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 



QUESTIONS 

23. What do we learn from a comparison of brain weight and in- 
telligence ? 

24. What is the relation between nervous pathology and mental 
abnormality ? 

25. Is phrenology admissible? 

26. What view concerning the relation of brain and mind is sug- 
gested by the unity of mind? 



§ 2. The Nervous System 

I. The Elements of the Nervous System 

The number of elements making up the nervous system 
is estimated at about four thousand millions. It will help 

us to comprehend 
the significance 
of this number if' 
we understand 
that a man's life 
devoted to nothing 
but counting them 
would be too short 
to accomplish 
this task, for a 
hundred years 
contain little more 
than three thou- 
sand million seconds. These elements are stringlike 
bodies, so thin that they are invisible to the naked eye. 
They are generally called neurons. Within them different 
parts are to be distinguished. The part which is most 
important for the neuron's life is a spherical, bobbin- 
shaped, pyramidal, or starlike body, called the ganglion 




Fig. I. — Multipolar Cell Body. 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



31 



cell or cell body, located usually near one of the ends of 
the long fiber of the neuron, but sometimes nearer the 
middle of the fiber. The length 
of the fiber varies from a fraction 
of an inch to several feet. The 
fiber may be compared with a tele- 
phone wire, inasmuch as its func- 
tion consists in carrying a peculiar 
kind of excitatory process. 

At both ends of the neuron are 
usually found treelike branches. 
When the cell body is located near 
one of the ends of the fiber, many 
of these branches take their origin 
from the cell body and give it the 
pyramidal or star like appearance 





Fig. 2. — Pyramidal Cell 
Body. 

a. Nerve fiber with collaterals. 

illustrated by figures 
I, 2, and 4. These 
branches are called den- 
drites, from the Greek 
word for tree, dendron. 
How wonderfully com- 
plicated the branching 
of a neuron may be is 
illustrated by figure 3. In addition to the dendrites a 
neuron possesses another kind of branches, resembling in 



Fig. 3. 



Dendrites of a Nerve Cell 
OF THE Cerebellum. 



32 



GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 



character the tributaries of a large river, entering into it 
at any point of its course. These are called collaterals 
(lowest part of figure 2). 

The ganglion cells have a varying internal structure, 
which may be made visible to the eye when the cells have 

been stained by the use of 
different chemicals. They are 
found to contain small corpus- 
cles with a network of minute 
fibrils between them, as shown 
in figures i and 4. The 
nerve fibers, too, in spite of 
being only -^ to 
3^^ mm. thick, 
permit us to dis- 
tinguish smaller 
parts (fig. 5). 
The core con- 
sists of a bundle 
of delicate, semi- 
fluid, parallel 
fibrils, the axis- 
cylinder. This 
is surrounded 
generally by a 
fatty, marrow- 
like sheath, and 
in the peripheral parts of the system this 
sheath is again inclosed in a membrane. 
Certain fibers attain a considerable length, 
for example, those which end in the fingers 
and toes, having their origin in the spinal 
region of the body. 




Fig. 4.— Various Types of 
Cell Bodies. 

/ and 2, Giant pyramidal cell bodies; 
ft, nerve fiber. 




Fig. 5. — Longi- 
tudinal Sec- 
tion OF A 
Nerve Fiber 
WITH Stained 
Fibrils. 



a, MeduUated 
sheath. 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 33 

The treelike branches of the main fiber and of the 
collaterals, if far away from the cell body, are sometimes 
called the terminal arborization, from the Latin word for 
tree, arbor (fig. 6). The 
treelike branching has most 
probably a functional signifi- 
cance of great importance. 
It enables the endings of 
different neurons to come 
into close enough contact 
to make it possible for the 
nervous processes to pass 
over from one neuron into 
another neuron, without 
destroying the individuality, 
the relative independence 

of each neuron. 

_,_, , . Fig. 6.— Terminal Arborization of 

Wherever large masses of optical nerve fibers. 

neurons are accumulated, 

the location of the ganglion cells can be found directly by 

the naked eye. The fibers are colorless and somewhat 

transparent. Where they are massed together, the whole 

looks whitish, as is the case with snow crystals, or foam. 

The ganglion cells, however, contain a dark pigment, and 

where many of them are present among the fibers, the 

whole mass looks reddish gray. Accordingly one speaks 

of white matter and gray matter in the nervous system. 

The nature of the excitatory process for the carriage of 

which the neurons exist is still unknown. It is certain, 

however, that this process is not an electrical phenomenon. 

Electrical changes accompany the nervous process and 

enable us to recognize its presence and even to measure 

it; but they are not identical with the nervous process. 




34 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

Probably it is a kind of chemical process, perhaps analo- 
gous to the migration of ions in the electrolyte of a 
galvanic element, the lost energy being restored by the 
organism. Two facts are especially noteworthy. The 
velocity of propagation has been found to be about 60 
meters per second in the human nervous system. In the 
lowest animals propagation is often considerably slower. 
It is clear, therefore, that it is an altogether different 
magnitude from the velocities found in light, electricity, 
or even sound. 

A second fact is the summation of weak stimulations. 
The second one produces a stronger effect than the first, 
the third again a stronger effect, and so on. It also 
happens that a number of successive stimuli produce a 
noticeable effect, whereas one of these stimuli alone, on 
account of its weakness, would produce none. On the 
other hand, if strong stimuli succeed one another, the 
effect becomes less and less conspicuous. The neurons are 
fatigued, as we say, and require time for recuperation. 

2. The Architecture of the Nervous System 

The elements of the nervous system just described are 
combined into one structure according to a surprisingly 
simple plan, in spite of its seeming complexity. This appar- 
ent complexity results chiefly from the enormous number 
of elements entering into the combination. The purpose 
of the nervous architecture may be briefly described thus : 
The conductivity of the nervous tissue is employed to 
bring all the sensory points of the living organism into 
close connection with all the motor points^ thus making a 
body capable of unitary action out of a mere accumulation 
of organs y each of which serves its specific end. Walking 
along and meeting an obstacle, I must be able first to look 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 35 

about and find a way of pushing it aside or climbing over 
it, and then to push or climb. This is impossible unless 
my eyes are connected with the muscles of the head, the 
arms, the legs. Perhaps I am inattentive, or it is dark, so 
that I run against the obstacle with my feet or my body. 
In this case it is necessary that the sensory points of my 
skin be connected with all those muscles. Hearing a call, 
I must be able to turn my head so that I may hear more 
distinctly the sound I am expected to perceive ; but I 
must also be able to move my tongue and the rest of 
my vocal organs in order to answer, or, as the case may 
require, my arms and legs in order to defend and pro- 
tect myself. Thus the ear and all other sensory points 
of the body must be closely connected with all the motor 
points. 

It is plain, then, that the simplest kind of nervous system 
must consist of three kinds of neurons : sensory (often 
called afferent), motor (often called efferent), and connect- 
ing neurons. To improve the working of such a system, 
the afferent and the efferent neurons, and especially the 
connecting (associating) paths, are developed by the intro- 
duction of additional neurons, serving to cross-connect the 
primary chains of neurons. Figure 7 illustrates the archi- 
tecture of an exceedingly simple nervous system of the 
most rudimentary kind. 

A perfection of the system is brought about by a super- 
structure built on essentially the same plan. Figure 8 is a 
diagram illustrating this. The points S' and M' corre- 
spond to the points of the same names in figure 7. But 
several systems (three in the diagram) like that of figure 
7 have been combined by connecting neurons in exactly 
the same manner in which the combination was effected in 
figure 7. In this higher system (nerve center, we should 



36 



GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 



call it) the points S" and M" have a 'significance compar- 
able to that of S' and M'. 





s, s, s. 



I 



^l' 



M« W-, M, 



Fig. 7. 



3 "3 

Diagram of Nervous Architecture: Reflex Arches con- 
nected BY A Low Nerve Center. 

(From Psychological Review, 15, 1908.) 



Several of these larger systems (three in the diagram) 
are combined again by means of connecting neurons in 




$,S,S, 



Wy MjJ M, 



Fig. 8.— Diagram of Nervous Architecture : Lower Nerve Centers 
connected by a Higher Center. 

(From Psychological Review, 15, 1908.) 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



37 



exactly the same manner as before. This is illustrated 
by figure 9. The points S'" and M'^' have a significance 
like that of S' and M'y S'" being nearer to sensory points 
of the body than to motor points, M'" being nearer to 
motor points. This system of connecting neurons repre- 
sents again what we may call a higher nerve center — 
higher still than those which are combined in it. 

Thus we may conceive any number of systems, one still 
higher than the other. And we may understand how it is 




Fig. 9.— Diagram of Nervous Architecture: Higher Nerve Centers 

CONNECTED BY A STILL HIGHER CENTER. 

possible that simpler mental functions may enter into a 
combination, forming a unitary new function, without com- 
pletely losing their individuality as functions of a lower 
order ; for combinations of simple functions represented by 
direct connections into complex functions are brought 
about only by mediation of higher connecting neurons 
which represent the less direct connections of sensory and 
motor points. The most manifold associations are made 
possible. A practically inexhaustible number of different 
adaptations is structurally prepared, so that the most com- 
plicated circumstances and situations find the organism 
capable of meeting them in a useful reaction. This type of 
nervous system is the property of the highest animals and 



38 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

of man. The lower type of nervous system is represented 
by the reflex arches of the so-called spinal and subcortical 
centers. The higher type is represented by the cerebrum 
and cerebellum, which during a process of evolution cover- 
ing hundreds of thousands of years have gradually been de- 
veloped to serve as the highest centers of the nervous system. 

3. The Anatomy of the Nervous System 

The most prominent part of the nervous system is that in- 
closed within the skull and the vertebral column. The spinal 
cord runs all through this column up to the skull. Entering 
into the skull, it thickens and forms what is called the bulb 
(medulla oblongata). It then divides into several bodies, 
which are referred to as the subcortical centers, because they 
are located below the cortex, which is the surface layer of the 
cerebrum, or large brain. These subcortical centers contain 
the central ends of neurons which are links of chains of 
afferent neurons coming from the higher sense organs and 
from the sensory points of the skin and the internal organs. 
Chains of efferent neurons, on the other hand, take their 
origin in the subcortical centers, reaching at their peripheral 
ends the motor points of the body, that is, the muscle fibers 
of our skeletal muscles and of the muscle tissues contained 
in the alimentary canal and the other internal organs. 

Above and partly surrounding the subcortical centers 
are the large brain and the cerebellum or small brain. 
The ganglion cells of the neurons contained in the cerebrum 
and cerebellum are all located near the surface or cortex. 
There seems to be a pecuHar advantage — not yet perfectly 
understood — in having the gray matter spread out over the 
surface of the cerebrum and cerebellum in as thin a layer 
as possible. To this end the surface of the cerebrum is 
much increased by the formation of large folds, separated 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



39 



by deep fissures (see figure lo). In the cerebellum the 
folds are more numerous and exceedingly fine, and they 
do not have the appearance of being the product of fissura- 
tion. The surface of the cerebrum is estimated to be equal 
to a square with a side eighteen inches long. Without the 
fissures the surface would be only about one third of this. 
The mixture of ganglion cells and fibers making up the 




Fig. io. — Frontal Section of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere. 

gray matter of the brain is illustrated in figures ii and 12. 
Both are sections of the cortex of the cerebrum. In figure 
1 1 the cell bodies alone are stained and thus made visible ; 
in figure 12 the fibers alone are stained. 

From what has been said thus far it is clear that certain 
areas of the cortex must be connected with certain groups 




Fig. II. — Section of the Cere- Fig. 12. — Section of the Cere- 
bral Cortex. bral Cortex. 

Only the cell bodies are stained. Only the fibers are stained. 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



41 



of sensory points or motor points of the body much more 
directly than with others. This is confirmed by histo- 
logical, pathological, and experimental investigations. For 
the eyes and the ears, for the muscles of arms and legs, hands 
and feet, even the several fingers and toes, the correspond- 




FiG. 13.— Localization of Peripheral Functions in the Cerebral 

Cortex. 

ing-areas of the cortex — that is, the areas with which 
there is direct connection — are definitely known. Figure 
1 3 conveys an idea of the relation between certain parts of 
the brain and the sensory and motor organs of the body. 



4. The Nervous System and Consciousness 

We have already touched on the question as to the rela- 
tion between the nervous system and consciousness. It is 
evident that no single point of the nervous system can be 
regarded as the long-searched-for seat of the soul, since 
no single point is structurally or functionally distinguished 
from all others. But it does not follow that mental func- 



42 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

tions are localized in different parts of the brain according 
to the popular conception of judgment, memory, will, and 
so on, each depending on a special part of the brain. 
There is no more truth in the similar assertions of phrenol- 
ogy. Localization of function in this sense is impossible. 
Judgment is not a mental function which can be separated 
from memory and attention. No more separable from each 
other are such functions as religious sentiment, filial love, 
self-consciousness. The sensational, ideational, and affec- 
tive elements of these functions are to a considerable extent 
the same. 

Localization of mental functions really means this: — 
Since there is a division of labor among the sensory and 
motor organs of the body, and since each of these organs is 
most directly connected with certain areas of the cortex and 
much less directly with the other areas, it is to be expected 
that certain states of consciousness will occur only when 
certain areas of the cortex are functioning. It is but nat- 
ural that the province of the cortex most directly connected 
with the eyes serves vision, including both visual perception 
and visual imagination ; that the province of the cortex most 
directly connected with the ears serves audition. Who would 
expect anything else ? In the same sense, the sensations of 
touch, of taste, and so on, are localized in the brain. The 
same rule holds good for movements. When our limbs move 
in consequence of some thought concerning them, the areas 
of the cortex which are most closely connected with them 
must function, while other areas may remain inactive. Ac- 
tivity of our vocal organs, in the service of our mind, can 
occur only by the influence of that province of the cortex 
which is most directly connected with the muscles of the 
vocal organs. But how varied are the thoughts which may 
bring about action of the vocal organs ! On the other hand, 



RELATION BETWEEN BRAIN AND MIND 43 

how diversified may be the movements by which a mother 
may react upon the crying of her child ! In either case it 
may be right to say that our mind is localized in the brain 
as a whole — not, of course, equally in every infinitesimal 
particle, but distributed through the brain in a manner com- 
parable to the distribution of the roots and branches of a 
tree. 

QUESTIONS 

27. To what kind of things are the neurons comparable? 

28. How many neurons does the nervous system contain? 

29. What kinds of branches does a neuron possess ? 

30. What are white matter and gray matter? 

31. How does the velocity of a nervous process compare with other 
velocities in nature ? 

32. What is the general function of the nervous system? 

33. Can you draw a diagram illustrating the architecture of a simple 
and of a more complex nervous system ? 

34. How can simpler nervous functions enter into a combination 
without completely losing their individuality ? 

35. What is meant by subcortical ? 

36. What is meant by afferent and efferent neurons? 

37. How large is the surface of the brain? 

38r What is meant by sensory and motor areas of the cortex? 
39. Where is the seat of the soul? 



§ 3. Explanation of the Functional Relation 
BETWEEN Brain and Mind 

How the functional relation between the mind and the 
nervous system should be explained, is a question discussed 
for centuries and variously answered. But all the answers 
are essentially either the one or the other of these two : 
(i) Either the brain is a tool of the mind, or (2) it is an 
objectified conception of the mind itself. 



44 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

I. The Brain a Tool of the Mind 

Popular thought, supported by desires common to all 
human beings, readily accepts the view that mind is essen- 
tially different from matter, that its laws are in every re- 
spect different from the laws of material nature, and that 
the brain, being a part of the material nature, is simply the 
special tool used by the mind in its intercourse with nature. 
Consider what a contrast seems to exist between logical 
certainty and the mere probability derived from more or 
less deceptive sense impressions, between voluntary atten- 
tion and sensual desire, between religious inspiration and 
ordinary perception, artistic creation and everyday work. 
Nevertheless, these highest as well as the lowest activities 
of the mind need a tool with which they can get into com- 
munication with the world; and this tool, says popular 
thought, is the brain. By means of this tool the mind can 
take possession of the world and shape it at will. This 
explanation of the functional relation between the mind 
and the nervous system agrees well with the facts above 
discussed concerning brain weight and intelligence, and 
nervous pathology and mental abnormality. That the 
magnitude, the architecture, the normal condition of a tool 
have an influence on the task performed, is plain enough. 
Many a piece of music can be played on a large organ 
having a great variety of stops, whereas its performance 
on a small instrument would be impossible. Raffael might 
have deserved the name of a great painter if born without 
arms, but the world would never have known it. 

The facts of localization of function, however, do not 
agree so well with this tool conception of the brain, which 
always leads us back again to the theory that the mind 
takes hold of its tool at a single point. If the mind can 



RELATION BETWEEN BRAIN AND MIND 45 

suffer or produce this change only here, that change only 
there, it is difficult to see why we should regard it as an 
altogether separate entity. Some have pointed out, as an 
analogy, that truth too is everywhere, and because of its 
absolute unity, everywhere in its totality, without being 
bound to space and time. I must doubt, however, if truth 
is present where such analogies are worked out, for noth- 
ing can be less clear than the assertion that truth has 
unity. Mind is not everywhere in its totality, neither in the 
brain nor in the whole world. It is partly here, partly 
there ; as seeing mind it is in the occipital convolutions of 
the brain, as hearing mind in the temporal convolutions. 
Thus we are forced, if we regard the brain as the mind's 
tool, to regard the mind as an entity possessing spatial 
form. If we reject this conclusion, we must also reject 
the premise that the brain is the mind's tool. 

There are two other difficulties of very considerable im- 
portance. One of them is compliance with the principle 
of the conservation of energy. If mind is an entity inde- 
pendent of the brain, if the brain is a tool which mind can 
use arbitrarily, without having to obey the laws of the 
material world, there would be a serious break in the con- 
tinuity of natural law, and the principle of the conserva- 
tion of energy would suffer an exception. 

Until recently it was, not probable, but at least pos- 
sible, that this principle of the conservation of energy 
was not strictly correct when applied to conscious beings, 
especially to man. But in recent years direct experiment 
has proved that it applies to the dog, and even to man. 
In an animal performing no gross muscular work the 
energy supplied by the food is completely transformed into 
heat, which is absorbed by the animal's surroundings. 
Rubner has found as the result of very exact measure- 



46 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

ments that the heat produced by an animal during several 
weeks is within one half of one per cent (that is, within the 
probable error) equal to the quantity of chemical energy 
received from the food. One might think that it would 
be rash to apply conclusions reached by experimenting on 
a dog to man, whose mental life stands on a much higher 
level. But even this objection has been removed by At- 
water. He performed similar experiments on five educated 
persons, varying the conditions of mental and muscular 
activity or relative rest. The result is the same. Taking 
the total result, there is absolute equality between the 
energy supplied and the energy given out ; in the human 
organism, mind has thus been proved to be subject to the 
laws of the natural world. 

The second difficulty spoken of consists in the fact that, 
accepting the view which regards the brain as the mind's 
tool, we cannot well avoid regarding the mind as a kind of 
ghost or demon, similar to the demons with which the im- 
agination of primitive peoples populates the universe — 
gaseous and usually invisible men, women, giants, or dwarfs. 
Mankind has always felt strongly inclined to believe in 
the existence of such demons, and is still fond of making 
them the subjects of fairy tales and similar stories. But 
the more mature experience of the last centuries of human 
history has eliminated them from our theories of the actual 
world and assigned them their proper places in tales and 
mythology. Winter and summer, rain and sunshine, even 
the organic processes in the heart or the spinal cord are 
understood only by excluding from the explanation the as- 
sumption of such demons. The same is by analogy true 
for the processes in the brain, for the brain is not likely to 
be an exception to the rule. It is more difficult, of course, 
to determine directly whether such a demon exerts his in- 



RELATION BETWEEN BRAIN AND MIND 47 

fluence in the inaccessible cavity of the skull than it is on 
the street or even in a haunted house. But no assertion is 
entitled to be regarded as true merely because we cannot 
go to the place in question and observe that it is false. 
Why not assert that heaven is located on the back side of 
the moon and hell in the center of the sun, merely because 
no one can see with his own eyes that they are not there ? 
We must make only those assumptions which, considered 
from all points of view, have a high degree of probability, 
not those which flatter our vanity or appeal to us as the 
fashionable belief of the time. Now, it does'not seem prob- 
able that our brain is the residence of a separable demon, 
no matter whether we attribute to him the power of chang- 
ing at will the total amount of energy contained in our 
body, or conceive his activity, as some psychologists do, as 
a new form of energy added to the mechanical, thermal, 
electric, chemical, and so on, — requiring only an additional 
transformation of energy and not breaking down the prin- 
ciple of its conservation. 

2. The Brain an Objectified Conception of the Mind 

If we cannot regard the brain and the mind as two in- 
dependent entities, scarcely any other conception of them 
is possible except as a single entity of which we may obtain 
knowledge in two ways, an objective and a subjective way. 
Mind knows itself directly, without mediation of any kind, 
as a complex of sense impressions, thoughts, feelings, 
wishes, ideals, and endeavors, non-spatial, incessantly 
changing, yet to some extent also permanent. But mind 
may also be known by other minds through all kinds of 
mediations, visual, tactual, and other sense organs, micro- 
scopes and other instruments. When thus known by other 
minds, mind appears as something spatial, soft, made up of 



48 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 

convolutions, wonderfully built out of millions of elements, 
that is, as brain, as nervous system. By mind and brain 
we mean the same entity, viewed now in the aspect in which 
mind knows itself, now in the aspect in which it is known 
by other minds. 

Suppose a person is asked a question and after some 
hesitation replies. In so far as this act is seen, heard, and 
otherwise perceived (or imagined as seen, heard, or other- 
wise perceived), it is a chain of physical, chemical, neuro- 
logical, etc., processes, of material processes as we may 
say. But that part of the chain of material processes 
which occurs in the nervous system may not only be known 
by others, but may know itself directly, as a transformation 
of perceptual consciousness into thought, feeling, willing. 
The links of these two chains of material processes in the 
brain and of mental states should not be conceived as in- 
termixed and thus forming one new chain, but rather as 
running parallel — still better as being link for link identi- 
cal. The illusion that one of these chains brings forth the 
other is caused by the fortuitous circumstance that they do 
not both become conscious at once. He who thinks and 
feels cannot at the same time experience through his sense 
organs the nervous processes as which these thoughts and 
feelings are objectively perceptible. He who observes 
nervous processes cannot at the same time have the 
thoughts and feelings as which these processes know 
themselves. Those objective processes, however, which 
go on outside of the nervous system, in particular those 
outside of the experiencing organism, in the external world, 
precede or follow mental states as causes generally precede 
their effects and effects follow their causes. There is no 
objection to speaking of a causal relation between material 
processes of this kind and mental states. 



RELATION BETWEEN BRAIN AND MIND 49 

Whatever explanation of the functional relation between 
brain and mind a person may accept, he need not con- 
stantly be on his guard lest he be inconsistent. We speak 
of the rising and setting sun without meaning that the 
earth is the center of the universe and that the sun moves 
around it. So we may also continue to speak quite gen- 
erally of the material world as influencing our mind, and 
of the mind as bringing about changes in the material 
world. 

Our view of the relation between body and mind leads 
to the further conclusion that, as our body may be distin- 
guished from its parts without having existence separate 
from its parts, so our mind may be distinguished from the 
several states of consciousness without having existence 
separate from them. Mind is the concept of the totality of 
mental functions. As self-preservation is the chief end 
of all bodily function, so self-preservation is the chief end 
of mental life. 

QUESTIONS 

40. Do the facts of comparative anatomy and of localized function 
agree with the view that the brain is the mind's tool ? 

41. Is mind subject to the law of the conservation of energy ? 

42. Is mind a demon interfering with the laws of nature? 

43. What is the cause of the illusion that nervous processes bring 
forth mental states, or that mental states bring forth nervous processes ? 

44. Why is it correct to regard certain events going on outside of the 
organism — and even in the organism, but outside of the nervous system 
— as effects or as causes of certain mental states ? 

45. Is there any objection to distinguishing our mind from the 
several mental states ? 



CHAPTER II 

THE SPECIAL FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

A. THE ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

§ 4. Sensation 
I. The Newly Discovered Kinds of Sensations 

We shall discuss first the simplest facts of mental life, 
later their complications. It has often been objected that 
such a treatment is not in harmony with the fact that we 
are more familiar with the complications than with the 
simpler facts. But we are also more familiar with our 
body than we are with muscle cells, nerve cells, and blood 
corpuscles, and yet we do not object to beginning the 
study of biology by a study of the structural elements and 
their chief properties. No one understands this to mean 
that the cells of various kinds existed first separately and 
were then combined into the body which consists of them. 
No one should believe that the simple mental states existed 
separately and were then combined into those complica- 
tions with which we have become familiar in everyday life. 
Simple mental states are abstractions. But we cannot hope 
to understand the complexity of mental life without using 
abstractions. 

Through the sense organs our mind receives information 
about the external world. The traditional classification of 
the sensations divided them into five groups. But the dis- 

50 



SENSATION 51 

tinction of five senses has been found to be insufficient. 
At least twice as many must be distinguished. 

When psychologists tried to explain all human knowledge 
in terms of experience, they met with some difficulty in 
the description of our experience of solid bodies. Tactual 
sensation was found to be insufficient for this explanation, 
since it informs us only of the side-by-side position of 
things, that is, of only two dimensions. It was soon rec- 
ognized that the movements of our limbs were important 
factors in this experience, and the question was asked : 
How do we perceive the spatial relations of our limbs and 
the resistances offered to changes in these spatial relations, 
that is, to movements ? The first answer to this question 
was, that the muscles, being obviously a kind of sense or- 
gan which gives us the familiar sensations of fatigue and 
muscular pain, are also capable of sending in definite groups 
of afferent nervous processes according to their conditions 
of contraction and tension. This answer was quite true, 
as far as it went; and about 1870 the sensory neurons of 
muscles were actually discovered. The tendons connect- 
ing the muscles with the bones were also found to contain 
sensory neurons. 

But this cannot be all, for we are able to judge the po- 
sition of our limbs even when the muscles are completely 
relaxed and a limb is moved by another person. It is 
further a fact that a weight and the distance through 
which it is moved can be estimated with fair accuracy, 
whether the arm is sharply bent or straightened out, al- 
though the contraction and tension of the muscles is very 
different in these two cases. It is now known with some 
certainty how these estimations are made possible. The 
surfaces of the joints are furnished with nerves. Make a 
slow movement of the hand or a finger and attend to the 



52 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

sensation resulting from it. There is little doubt that the 
sensation is localized in the joint. This view is supported 
by the fact that electrical stimulation of a joint considerably 
decreases the accuracy of^the estimation of weight and 
movement. 

The three classes of sensations — muscular, tendinous, 
and articular — are customarily grouped together under 
one heading as kinesthetic sensations, meaning literally 
sensations of movement. But, as we have noted, these 
sensations occur as the result not only of movements of 
our limbs, but also of pressure or pull when the limb is at 
rest. They always occur together with tactual sensations, 
but must nevertheless be strictly distinguished from them. 

Soon after this distinction had been recognized, the tact- 
ual, or rather cutaneous, sense was found to consist of sev- 
eral senses. The impressions of touch, that is, of pressure 
on the skin, of temperature, and of pain had always been 
distinguished ; but it had not been known that the areas of 
greatest sensitivity for touch are not identical with those 
for temperature, and that the sensitivity for pain may be 
greatly diminished without a corresponding change in the 
sensitivity for touch. It was only about 1880 that these 
observations were explained, when an anatomical separation 
of the neurons serving these different sensations was dem- 
onstrated. If we test the sensitivity of the skin by care- 
fully stimulating single points, it is found that not every 
point of the skin is sensitive, but that the sensitive points 
are isolated by larger or smaller insensitive areas. It 
is further found that the points sensitive to warmth are 
different from those sensitive to cold or to pressure or to 
pain. This can easily be demonstrated for the cold points 
by touching the skin in a number of successive points with 
a steel pen or a lead pencil. Generally only the touch is 



SENSATION 53 

perceived, but now and then an intense sensation of cold is 
felt on definite points, always recurring when these points 
are touched. It is somewhat more difficult to demonstrate 
the points sensitive to warmth. The sensation is in this 
case much less noticeable. The points sensitive to touch 
are on hairy parts of the skin always close to a hair ; on 
other parts, for instance the palm of the hand and par- 
ticularly the finger tips, they are located so close together 
that their separateness can be proved only by the use of 
very delicate instruments. The same is to be said of the 
pain points of the skin. We cannot, therefore, regard the 
skin as one organ of sense, but must regard it as contain- 
ing four classes of organs serving the senses of warmth, 
cold, pressure, and pain. 

We must be sure, of course, to distinguish between pain, 
as a sensation, and the feeling of unpleasantness which 
almost without exception accompanies pain. We must 
further distinguish the sensation of pain from intense cold, 
intense heat, strong pressure, dazzling light, all of which 
may produce pain as a secondary effect. But the sensation 
of pain is quite dissimilar from the sensations of cold, heat, 
pressure^and light, to which it is added in consequence of 
physiological conditions. The independence of the sen- 
sation of pain can easily be demonstrated by touching the 
cornea of the eye with a hair. Pain is then perceived 
without any touch or temperature sensation. The prick- 
ing sensation in our nose resulting from the breathing of 
chlorine or ammonia may also be mentioned as an illus- 
tration of the same point. Let us further understand that 
pain is not only a cutaneous sensation, but also a sensation 
localized in internal organs ; for instance, headache, tooth- 
ache, colic. 

The most interesting discovery of a new sense organ 



54 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

concerns the labyrinth of the ear. It was made quite un- 
expectedly. The labyrinth consists of the inner ear proper, 
or the cochlea, the system of three semicircular canals, and 
between these two organs a pair of small sacs, each 
containing a little stone or otolith, built of microscopic 
lime crystals. All these organs, being all of the nature 
of cavities filled with fluid and communicating, were 
originally regarded as serving the sense of hearing, although 
no one was able to say how. It was observed, however, 
that stimulation or lesion of the semicircular canals and of 
the sacs did not affect hearing, but resulted in disturbances 
of the coordination of the muscular activities in locomotion 
and normal position. For more than fifty years these 
observations remained unexplained ; and even then their 
explanation was but slowly accepted. 

It is now recognized that the semicircular canals and the 
sacs are not organs of hearing, but organs informing the 
organism about the movements or position of the head, and 
indirectly of the body as a whole. The sensations coming 
from these organs are usually so closely bound up with 
kinesthetic and tactual sensations that we have not learned 
to become conscious of them as a separate kind. Never- 
theless we may perceive them separately under favorable 
circumstances. If we close our eyes, turn quickly a few 
times on our heel, and suddenly stop, we are vividly con- 
scious of being turned in the opposite direction. This is a 
perception mediated by the semicircular canals. The fluid 
ring in the horizontal canal gradually assumes the motion 
of the body, in consequence of its friction against the walls ; 
and when the body suddenly stops moving, the fluid ring 
continues to move and to stimulate the sensory neurons 
for some time. If the body moves in a larger circle, for 
example on a merry-go-round or on a street car passing 



SENSATION 55 

around a curve, the mind perceives an inclination of the 
body towards the convex side of the curve. If we go up 
in an elevator, we have the impression, just after the 
elevator has stopped, of moving a short distance down. 
These are sensations of the otolith organs. 

The otoliths are slightly movable, one in the horizontal, 
the other in the vertical direction. If the body moves 
through a curve, the otolith which by centrifugal force is 
driven outwards stimulates the sensory neurons in the 
same manner in which it stimulates them when the body 
is inclined. The perception of the body's position is 
therefore the same. If the body is quickly moved up or 
down, the vertical otolith at first lags behind, and at the 
stop, through its inertia, continues to move a little in 
the same direction. The result is a brief perception of 
the body moving in the opposite direction. 

Artificial stimulation or lesion of the semicircular canals 
or otolith organs in animals tends to produce certain un- 
expected reflex movements of the body which the animal 
tries to counteract voluntarily, so that all kinds of unusual 
movements are observed. If these organs are destroyed, 
one source of information about the position and the move- 
ments of the body is lost. This loss is not very serious in 
man, in whom it occurs as a result of diseases of the ear ; 
man can obtain his orientation from visual, kinesthetic, 
and pressure sensations in spite of this loss. It is far more 
serious in aquatic and flying animals. Pressure differences 
are of no account when the body has nothing but water 
or air on all sides. In a greater depth of water vision 
is practically impossible. Under these circumstances the 
semicircular canals and the otolith organs are highly im- 
portant for an animal's life. Unfortunately no definite 
names have thus far been adopted for these senses. They 



56 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

are frequently called the static sense or the sense of 
equilibrium. But these names are of doubtful value, since 
other senses too may inform us about our equilibrium. 

The enumeration of our senses is not yet completed. 
What is hunger ? What is thirst ? What is nausea ? 
These mental states are certainly similar, in some respects, 
to tones and odors. They are sensations. There is the 
difference, however, that we do not project them into ex- 
ternal space, but think of them as characteristics of our 
own body's condition. How is consciousness of these sen- 
sations brought about } No doubt, in a manner similar to 
that of the mediation of such sensations as odors and tones : 
through the stimulation of sensory neurons and the propa- 
gation of nervous processes toward the motor points of the 
body. The place of stimulation must be somewhere in our 
organs of nutrition, and thus these organs must be re- 
garded also as a kind of sense organ. That the sensory 
function can be attributed to an organ in addition to an- 
other function has been proved by the example of the skin, 
muscles, and joints. The same may be said of other 
organs, for instance the lungs giving us the sensation of 
suffocation. 

We possess, therefore, a large number of organs whose 
primary function is of an active kind, but which also give 
information as to the condition of those active functions. 
The sensations resulting from them are as independent of 
each other as tones are of color or taste. But they do not 
permit of as many subdivisions as the sensations of the so- 
called higher senses. For the emotional part of our mental 
life they are of the greatest significance. Since we do not 
project them into the external world, but think of them as 
significant of the functions of our internal organs, they are 
rightly called by the common name of organic sensations. 



SENSATION 57 

2. The Other Sensations 

Besides the cutaneous sensations four classes were known 
to the older psychology : sensations of color, sound, odor, 
and taste. The relation of these sensations to the corre- 
sponding stimuli comprises a vast number of problems and 
theories, but we shall here state merely that which is of 
more general interest 

The taste — in the ordinary sense — of a substance is by 
no means made up exclusively of taste sensations in the spe- 
cial sense of this term. It is usually a complex of different 
sensations which almost invariably occur together. Only 
gradually do we learn to analyze this complex into its ele- 
ments. Touch sensations of the tongue and palate often 
enter into the combination, for instance in a burning or 
astringent taste. Sensations of smell are of particular im- 
portance in this connection. The different kinds of meat, 
of wine, of bread, and of many other foods and beverages 
are distinguished almost exclusively by the smell. Aside 
from these accompanying sensations, there are only four 
tastes proper : sweet, sour, salt, bitter, in all their possible 
mixtures and relative degrees of intensity. In a manner 
comparable to the distribution of cutaneous sensations, the 
taste sensations have their end organs at definite points 
in the papillae of the tongue and soft palate. The so- 
called taste buds contained in the walls of the papillae seem 
to be sensitive according to the principle of the division of 
labor, some serving chiefly this, others chiefly that taste. 
It is possible that all the taste buds of the same papilla 
mediate the same taste sensation, so that each papilla 
might be said to be in the service of a particular taste. 

The number of distinguishable odors is very large. Gas- 
eous, fluid, and solid substances, minerals, plants, and 



58 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

animals have usually their characteristic, although often 
very faint, odors. As new substances are discovered or 
new mixtures of substances invented, the number of odors 
is increased. Unfortunately it has thus far been impos- 
sible to arrange this multitude of odors in a system accord- 
ing to a simple plan. Various groups of related odors 
have been formed by investigators (for example, the odor 
of flowers, fruit, musk, onion, decaying matter). But it is 
difficult to include all possible odors in such groups ; and 
the relation between these groups is still unknown. One 
reason for this difficulty in understanding theoretically the 
sense of smell is the obvious fact that this sense has degen- 
erated in man. The organ of smell, a spot in the upper 
part of each nasal cavity, is of small extent in man com- 
pared with that of animals. Even more superior are the 
animals to man with respect to the development of the 
olfactory nerve center. The degeneration is the result of 
a lack of use. Man, walking upright, has but rarely an 
opportunity of approaching objects with his nostrils closely 
enough to be able to smell them. The animal, searching 
for food on the ground, smells unceasingly. 

The opposite is true for color sensations. They, too, are 
numerous, perhaps a million. But it is easy to group 
them into a system which permits us to understand their 
interrelations. The relations between the various colors 
are so simple that they can be symbolically represented 
by a geometrical figure, a double pyramid with a four- 
cornered base, like the one in figure 14. The vertical 
axis represents the visual sensations which are colorless, 
arrayed so that the brightest white is at one end, the 
darkest black at the other, the various grays between. 
The base of the pyramids, which is not perpendicular to 
the axis, but slanting, represents the series of colors of 



SENSATION 



59 



the spectrum plus the non-spectral purples, between red 
and violet, all arranged in an orderly manner around the 
axis. The nearer we approach the axis, the less saturated, 
that is, the more whitish, or grayish, or blackish are the 
colors represented. The most saturated colors are there- 
fore represented by wuitt 
the peripheral line 
of the base. The 
base is slanted be- 
cause the most satu- 
rated colors are not 
all of the same 
brightness (meaning 
by this term exclu- 
sively lightness as 
opposed to dark- 
ness). The satu- 
rated yellow is much 
brighter than the 
saturated blue and 
must therefore be 
located here, sym- 
bolically, nearer the 
point of white than ^^^' ''*• 
of black, while blue must be located nearer the point 
of black than of white. The figure shows clearly that 
it is impossible to deviate from the peculiar bright- 
ness of each saturated color without diminishing the 
saturation, for we cannot move up or down from any 
point of the peripheral line of the base and yet remain 
within the double pyramid, without approaching the axis. 
But if our starting point is a color of less than the maxi- 
mum of saturation, we may change the brightness within 




Black 

Color Pyramid. 



6o ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

certain limits without changing the saturation, for we may 
then, to a certain extent, move up and down parallel to 
the axis. 

Some have represented the color system by a double 
cone, using as common base a circle. But a four-cor- 
nered base represents an additional fact of experience 
which is lost sight of in the circular plane. The four 
colors red, green, blue, and yellow possess this property : 
that any one of them is entirely dissimilar in color tone 
to any of the other three, while any given color other than 
these must resemble just two of these. No other four or 
any other number of colors can be found which fulfill 
exactly these conditions. In order to represent this fact 
symbolically, we ought to give the colors red, green, blue, 
and yellow distinguished places in the periphery of the 
basal plane, and this can be done most easily by choosing 
as a base a four-cornered plane. 

By the aid of this color system it is easy to understand 
an abnormality of our color sense which occurs rather 
frequently, so-called color blindness. It is found almost 
exclusively among men, three per cent of them being 
affected, whereas it is very rare among women, although 
it is inherited through woman. Instead of three dimen- 
sions, two are sufficient for the representation of the color 
sensations of such individuals: a plane which is placed 
through the points white, black, blue, and yellow. The 
color sensations represented by those points of the pyra- 
mid which lie outside the plane just mentioned appear to 
the color-blind person yellowish if they are located on 
either side of the yellow triangle, so to speak ; they appear 
bluish if they are located on either side of the blue tri- 
angle, and colorless if located exactly on either side of 
the axis. There are, however, a large number of minor 



SENSATION 6 1 

differences not included or even expressed incorrectly 
in the above brief statement; the color-blind person, for 
instance, is more likely to see things yellowish than bluish. 
Since color-blind people may sometimes confuse such con- 
spicuously different colors as red and green, they are 
often called red-green-blind. That they also confuse 
greenish blue with violet seems less remarkable to the 
normal person than the former fact. In testing a color- 
blind person one must not expect to find that he will con- 
fuse any red with any green. Brightness and saturation 
play here very important parts, and all kinds of individual 
differences have been observed. Nevertheless color-blind 
people fail to distinguish red and green much more fre- 
quently than people having a normal color sense, and 
should therefore be strictly excluded from any service in 
which the distinction of red and green is of importance, 
as in railway and marine signaling. For the normal per- 
son red and green are the ideal colors of signals, because 
yellow is not always sufficiently different from white, and 
a saturated blue is too dark. 

It is interesting to observe that colors are never simple or complex 
in the sense in which a musical tone is simple and a chord is a multi- 
tude of tones, or lemonade is a mixture of sour and sweet. Any color 
sensation which is uniform over its area is as simple as any other. The 
colors which, in our color pyramid, are located between two of the four 
fundamental colors red, green, blue, and yellow are " mixtures " only in 
the sense that the mixed color resembles two of those four, not that we 
are conscious of two separate sensations in one act of perception. 

Nevertheless we often have to speak of mixed colors and of principal 
colors entering into mixtures. These phrases have many different 
meanings. Most colors which we see in actual life are mixtures in a 
physical sense, mixtures of ether waves, although our sense organ does 
not inform us as to whether they are mixtures or homogeneous light. 
White or gray or purple can never be anything but mixtures in this 
physical sense. In actual life the only color which is often simple. 



62 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

homogeneous light, is dark red, for physical causes which do not con- 
cern us here. But this physical complexity is irrelevant for the psy- 
chological question as to the simplicity or complexity of color sensation. 

Even more confusion has been carried into the psychology of color 
by the fact that in dyeing and painting chemical substances are some- 
times applied as they occur in nature or come from the factory, some- 
times they are first mixed together and then applied. The painter 
cannot afford to have an infinite number of color pigments on the 
palette. He selects therefore a small number, at least white, red, 
yellow, and blue. This is for many ends sufficient, and he may there- 
fore call these pigments his principal colors, and wonder why one 
should call green a " fundamental " color, since he can produce it by 
mixing blue and yellow. It is indeed no difficult task to find people 
who, like Goethe, are convinced that they are able to perceive in the 
green the yellow and the blue which the painter used in order to give 
us the impression of green. 

Still another difference occurs in the use of the terms simple and 
mixed colors in physiology, with reference to the processes going on 
in the eye and the part of the nervous system connected with the eye. 
It is plain, therefore, that whenever we speak of colors we must state in 
what sense we do this. 

Auditory sensations are usually divided into two classes : 
tones and noises. They do not often appear separately. 
A violin tone, for example, is accompanied by some noise, 
and in the howling of the wind tones may be discerned. 
Both may be perceived in many different intensities, and 
both may be said to be low or high. Many thousands of 
tones may be distinguished from the lowest to the highest 
audible. Within one octave, in the middle region, more 
than a thousand can be distinguished. The fact that in 
music we use only twelve tones within each octave arises 
from special reasons : first, the difficulty of handling an 
instrument of too many tones ; and especially the fact 
that with a particular tone only a limited number of others 
can be melodically or harmonically combined with a pleas- 
ing result. 



SENSATION 63 

Just as the colors, so the tones are a continuum, that is, 
one can pass from the lowest to the highest tones without 
at any moment making a noticeable change. We refer to 
this continuum by the word pitch. But tones also possess 
what is called quality; that is, they are either mellow or 
shrill. This mellowness is to some extent dependent on 
the pitch of each tone, for low tones are never very shrill 
and high tones never very mellow. But to some extent a 
tone may be made more or less shrill and yet retain exactly 
the same musical value, the same pitch. This is brought 
about by the overtones, of which a larger or smaller num- 
ber is nearly always added to musical tones. Without 
being perceived as separate pitches the overtones influence 
our consciousness of the mellowness of a tone — • the fewer 
overtones, the mellower; the more overtones, the shriller 
the tone. Each musical instrument has its characteristic 
quality of tone, and in some instruments, especially in organ 
pipes, the quality is skillfully controlled by the builder, who 
" voices " each pipe so that it produces the required number 
of overtones of the right intensities. 

It was^said above that the overtones, as a rule, are not 
perceived as separate pitches, added to the pitch of the 
fundamental tone. It is not impossible, however, to per- 
ceive them thus. Those who experience difficulty in per- 
ceiving the overtones as separate pitches may use at first 
special instruments, resonators, which are held against the 
ear and greatly increase each the intensity of a special 
overtone. After some practice one becomes aware of the 
pitch of an overtone without the aid of a resonator. 

Noises may be classified into momentary and lasting 
noises. Examples of the former are a click and the report 
of a gun ; examples of the latter, the roaring of the sea or 
the hissing of a cat. Many noises, as thunder, rattle, 



64 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

clatter, and the noises of frying and boiling, are mixtures 
of momentary and lasting noises. 

From all we have said it follows that the function of 
hearing is an analyzing function, enabling the mind to 
separate that which has lost its separate existence when 
it acts upon the tympanum. Two or three tones sounding 
together are usually perceived as two or three tones. In 
hearing music we can simultaneously listen to several 
voices. When two people talk together we may to some 
extent follow them separately. This is obviously an 
ability of great importance in animal life, since different 
objects, characterized by different tones or noises, rarely 
separate themselves spatially as the colors of different 
objects do, but act upon the sense organ as a single 
compound. 

There are, however, certain exceptions to the analyzing 
power of the ear. If two tones differ but little in pitch, 
they are not perceived as two, but a mean tone is heard 
beating as frequently in a second as the difference of the 
vibration rates indicates. The ear thus creates something 
new, but of course something definitely depending on the 
external processes. If two tones not quite so close in 
pitch are sounded, one or even several new tones are 
created, combination tones or difference tones, the pitch of 
the new tone being determined by the difference of the 
rates of vibration. These difference tones do not seem to 
serve any purpose in animal life. They are merely 
secondary phenomena, of little practical consequence, but 
of much interest to the student of the function of the 
organ of hearing. 

We have seen that the number of classes of sensations 
is fairly large; but to state this number exactly is im- 
possible. According as we count the muscles, the joints, 



SENSATION 65 

the lungs, the digestive organs as several sense organs or 
as a single group, the number of classes of sensations is 
larger or smaller. However, it matters little whether we 
count them or not. We know that provision is made for 
everything needed. Information about the most distant 
things is obtained through the eye ; information about the 
things in contact with the body or the body itself comes 
through the cutaneous and organic sense organs. Most 
varied is the information about things at a moderate dis- 
tance, obtained through eyes, ears, and nose combined. 

Many of the higher animals surpass man in one or the 
other respect through their sensory equipment. Many of 
the birds (for example, the carrier pigeons) have a sharper 
eye ; dogs and other animals, a keener sense of smell. The 
sense of hearing in man seems to be equal to that of the 
higher animals, and the cutaneous sense perhaps supe- 
rior. In one respect man is better equipped than his mode 
of living justifies, that is, in possessing the semicircular 
canals and the otolith organs, for which he has scarcely 
any use. In another respect he, as well as the animals, is 
very poorly equipped, that is, for the direct perception of 
the electromagnetic-optic phenomena of physics, only a 
small range of which can be perceived as a particular kind 
of sensations, namely, as colors. 

3. Temporal and Spatial Attributes 

The study of the simple in mental life, as previously 
mentioned, is always a study of abstractions. The actual 
experience even of the briefest moment never consists 
of a single sensation. And actual sensations are always 
characterized by more than the properties which we have 
thus far discussed. Colors always occupy space of a cer- 



ee ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

tain size and shape ; tones come from a certain direction ; 
both colors and tones are either continuous or intermittent, 
they are perceived simultaneously or in succession. We 
naturally inquire into the laws of these spatial and tempo- 
ral relations. Unfortunately psychologists have not yet 
agreed on a definite answer to the question concerning 
space and time. The question is beset with difficulties, 
partly real, partly imaginary. 

Is it possible to perceive temporal relations as sensory 
qualities as we perceive colors, tones, tastes, and smells as 
sensory qualities ? We certainly lack a sense organ of 
time. But aside from this, it seems impossible to perceive 
duration at its beginning, when the end is not yet known ; 
impossible to perceive it at the end, when its beginning no 
longer exists and can only be recalled in memory. It 
seems equally impossible to get direct knowledge of a 
spatial relation. Imagine one particular point a of the 
skin or the retina of the eye. If this is stimulated, our 
mind receives a definite impression of touch or color, but 
no indication of or reference to any other point, since no 
other point is stimulated. Let the same be true for the 
point ^. How, then, if a and d are stimulated simultane- 
ously, can the mind receive an impression of distance be- 
tween the two points, since there is no such consciousness 
in the perception of either of them ? If the mere fact of 
an objective distance between the stimulated neurons were 
a sufficient explanation, then tones too should be localized 
differently. 

Those who took these objections seriously tried to think 
of some means by which the objective, but not directly 
impressive, spatial relations could become known to the 
mind. It was suggested that the almost unceasing move- 
ments of the eyes and fingers, the chief organs of space 



SENSATION e^J 

perception, might have significance in this connection ; 
that perhaps the kinesthetic sensations of eye and finger 
movement, being added to the visual or tactual impres- 
sions, made up the consciousness of spatial relationship. 

All attempts, however, to prove the correctness of this 
and similar theories by applying them to the details of 
special experience, have failed. While there is no doubt 
that movements of our eyes and fingers are of great im- 
portance for the development and extension of the spatial 
consciousness in the individual as well as in the race, they 
are not the source from which springs the individual's 
ability to perceive spatial relationship. The fundamental 
part of our ability of spatial perception is inborn, just as 
our ability to perceive light or blueness or cold is inborn. 
From this inborn capacity for spatial perception the indi- 
vidual's delicate and elaborate sense of space is derived. 

The most convincing proof that there is an innate ca- 
pacity for spatial perception, is the spatial consciousness 
of persons born blind, to whom an operation has given 
eyesight. The crystalline lenses of these persons have 
been as littld transparent as ground glass, so that they have 
been unable to recognize any outlines of things. Never- 
theless, they make spatial distinctions immediately after 
the operation for removal of the lens. Of course they 
cannot, without further experience, tell that a round thing 
is the ball with which they have been familiar through the 
sense of touch, or a long and narrow thing a walking 
stick. But they immediately perceive the round thing as 
something different from the long and narrow thing, with- 
out any tendency to confuse them. Spatial extent is 
therefore an attribute of visual and tactual sensation as 
brightness or darkness is an attribute of visual sensation, 
and mellowness or shrillness an attribute of tone; with 



68 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

this difference only, that spatial extent is not restricted to 
one sense, but is common to visual and cutaneous sensa- 
tions. That this is founded on some kind of similarity of 
these senses cannot be doubted. But this similarity is to 
be looked for in structural peculiarities of the nerve 
centers, not in accessory mental states serving as special 
agents of spatial consciousness. 

Very much the same is the case with time. Let us 
admit that the temporal consciousness of our ordinary life 
is largely mediated by accessory sensations and images. 
Minutes, hours, days, weeks, are not experienced directly as 
properties of sense perception, but are extensions of simpler 
experiences. But such extensions would be impossible if 
duration and succession were not, somewhere in our mental 
life, direct experiences. They are direct experiences in 
some very brief temporal perceptions occupying, say, only 
a fraction of a second. The flash of a lighthouse signal, 
the quick succession of sounds when a person knocks at 
a door, are perceived as having temporal attributes without 
any mediation by conscious states acting as agents. The 
temporal attributes are elements of perception no less 
direct than the intensity of the light or of the sound. 
The same holds for all other sensations. Time is an attri- 
bute common to all. But here, as in space, we cannot tell 
exactly in what respect all senses are similar so far as the 
nervous processes are concerned. It seems that these pro- 
cesses or their after effects continue a certain time after the 
stimulation has ceased. 

Another attribute common to all sense impressions is the 
belonging-together of sensations, the unity in variety y so to 
speak. The most striking example is the relationship of 
tones in harmony and melody. Tones of certain compara- 
tively simple ratios of vibration belong together in a higher 



SENSATION 69 

degree than others. We cannot explain this by reference 
to conscious agents mediating the effect. It is a funda- 
mental attribute of each tonal combination, the conscious 
effect of our inherited nature. It is a property of sense, 
not of thought. 

In other cases our consciousness of relationship is indi- 
rect, mediated by other conscious agents ; for instance, 
when I group together voluntarily four or five adjoining 
holes of a sieve and perceive them as a unit. This group- 
ing together would be impossible if the mind did not pos- 
sess the native ability to perceive a number of sensational 
elements as a unit without altogether losing the conscious- 
ness of variety. It is a mere consequence of our inborn 
nature when we perceive as such units, for example, an 
animal romping among unchanging surroundings, a picket 
fence divided into groups by the fence posts, a familiar 
compound perfume, a dish made up of several familiar food 
substances. The same holds for successive elements. We 
could never perceive tones or noises in various rhythm 
forms if our mind did not possess the native ability to per- 
ceive a nuniber of successive elements of sensation under 
certain conditions as a sensory unit. 

Our numerical concepts are obviously only abstract sym- 
bols for units containing each a certain variety of elements. 

4. Sensation and Stimulus 

It is most interesting to observe the astonishing absolute 
sensitiveness o^ some of our senses, that is, their ability to 
respond to exceedingly small stimuli. It has been a diffi- 
cult task to design physical instruments as sensitive to 
sound as the ear. It has not been possible, thus far, to 
surpass the ear. The sensitiveness of the eye to the faint- 



70 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

est light is estimated to be a hundred times that of the most 
sensitive photographic plates. Remember what a long ex- 
posure is necessary to photograph things in a rather dark 
room ; but the eye takes a snap shot, so to speak, of a star 
of the fifth magnitude, or of a landscape in diffused moon- 
light. Man's organ of smell is far inferior to that of many 
animals. Nevertheless a trace of tobacco smoke or musk 
in the air whose presence no chemist could detect is easily 
perceived through the nose. A gram is about one twenty- 
eighth of an ounce; a milligram is one thousandth of a 
gram. One millionth of a milligram of an odorous sub- 
stance is sufficient to affect the organ of smell. Taste 
also is sensitive, particularly when supported, as in tasting 
wine or tea, by smell. The cutaneous and kinesthetic 
senses, on the other hand, are not very sensitive. A weak 
pressure, a small weight, a slight tremor of our limbs, a 
spatial extent, can be detected much more readily by deli- 
cate instruments than by our fingers or our kinesthetic 
organs. 

Very important is the range of perceptibility. Our 
measuring laboratory instruments are, as a rule, adapted 
only to a small range. To weigh a heavy thing, like a 
stack of hay, we have to use a balance differing from that 
used by the prescription druggist. The watchmaker's 
tools are much like those of the machinist, but neither 
could use the other's tools. Nature cannot well provide 
separate sets of tools for delicate and gross work. With 
our hand we estimate the weight of ounces, pounds, and 
hundredweights. The same ear which perceives a falling 
leaf can be exposed to the thunder of cannon without ceas- 
ing to respond in its normal way. The eye which perceives 
a small fraction of the light of a firefly, can look at the sun 
somewhat covered by mist, radiating light many million 



SENSATION 71 

times as intense. No laboratory instrument has an equal 
range of applicability. 

This wide range of usefulness is made possible partly by 
purely mechanical provisions, partly by a special law of 
nervous activity usually called Weber's law. The iris of 
the eye with pupil in the center is a readily changeable dia- 
phragm. The stronger the external light, the smaller the 
pupil, and the reverse ; so that the eye is; capable of func- 
tioning at a stronger and also at a fainter illumination than 
it could function if the width of the pupil were of a medium, 
unchangeable diameter. The nose can smell faint odors 
better if larger quantities of the odorous substances are by 
sniffing brought into contact with the organ. Too strong 
odors are kept away by blowing out the air. 

More important, however, than such mechanical de- 
vices is the effect of Weber's law. If a stimulus is 
increased, the nervous excitation is also increased, — 
not absolutely, but only relatively to the stimulus before 
the increase. Suppose an oil lamp of ten candle power 
needs an addition of a two candle power light to make 
me observe ^hat the illumination has changed. Never- 
theless I shall not be able to observe a change of illumina- 
tion if to an incandescent gas light of sixty candles two 
candles are added. The addition must be in proportion 
to the stimulus. Since sixty is six times ten and twelve 
is six times two, twelve candles must be added to make 
me observe the difference in illumination. To an arc 
light of two thousand candles four hundred have to be 
added to obtain the same result. If a postal clerk is able 
to recognize that a letter which he weighs on his hand and 
which is one twentieth heavier than an ounce, requires 
more than the one postage stamp attached to it, he will 
probably be found capable of observing in the same 



72 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

manner that a package of newspapers prepaid for one 
pound does not have the correct number of stamps if it is 
actually one twentieth heavier than a pound. 

Another way of speaking of the law is this : If we 
imagine a definite stimulus successively increased by such 
amounts that the change of the sensation is each time just 
as noticeable as it was the last time, the added amounts 
of the stimulus are a geometrical progression. Let us 
express the fact that the change of the sensation can 
always be noticed with the same ease^ by saying that the 
additions to the sensation are an arithmetical progression. 
We can then state Weber's law in these simple words : 
If the sensation is to increase in arithmetical progression, 
the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression. 
This statement is mathematically identical with the most 
widely adopted statement of the law, namely, that the 
sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus. 

The practical result of the law in our mental life is this : 
The mind is informed of a further increase in the intensity 
of the stimulus (however great this intensity may have 
become before this last increase) without having to respond 
to the absolute intensity of the stimulus with a correspond- 
ingly enormous activity of the animal organism. Thus 
the mind is enabled, figuratively speaking, to weigh a stack 
of hay or a druggist's herb on the same balance, to apply 
the same tool to a watch or to a railroad locomotive, or at 
least to perform its work with a much smaller number of 
tools than would otherwise be required. In the eye, for 
instance, we have, as we see below, only two different 
kinds of receiving instruments for faint and for strong 
light. 

It must be mentioned, however, that Weber's law does not hold 
good over an unlimited range of intensities of stimulation. If the sun 



SENSATION 73 

were twice as bright, it would not appear brighter to the eye. For 
such extreme intensities the law is no longer valid. Neither is it valid 
for exceedingly low intensities ; it makes no difference to the eye 
whether the wall of a dark room is illuminated from a distance of three 
or four yards by the glow of one cigarette or a dozen. The logarithmic 
equation applies only to a certain — quite large — range of medium in- 
tensities. For this range our sensitiveness to change is not only con- 
stant, but also greatest. Changes in illumination within this range can 
be perceived as soon as the stimulus increases or decreases by about 
one hundred and fiftieth. 

Weber^s law has still another practical significance. A thing which 
we recognize by the aid of the differences in illumination of its parts (as, 
for example, a stone relief) or by its differences in loudness (as a 
rhythm beaten on a drum) always retains, not the same absolute differ- 
ences, but the same quotients or proportions of the different light or 
tone values, however our distance from the thing varies. Weber's law, 
then, enables us to perceive the identity of the thing although the 
absolute light or tone values have undergone change. If our nervous 
activities were not regulated in accordance with Weber's law, the relief 
and the rhythm might become unrecognizable at a greater distance^ 
and the relief also at dusk. 

A further important relation between our mental life 
and the external world consists in our much greater 
sensitiveness! to the moving and changing than to the 
stable and permanent. A pencil point moved over the skin 
under slight pressure gives us a perception of the length 
and direction of the line traversed more accurate than the 
impression received from the edge of a screwdriver pressed 
on the skin. On the peripheral parts of the retina the 
sizes and distances of things are not easily perceived ; but 
no difficulty is experienced in noticing a waving handker- 
chief or a starting animal. Only the small central part of 
the retina is adapted to the perception of the motionless. 

The same statement holds for qualitative changes. The 
eye is not only more sensitive to that which qualitatively 
changes than to that which remains unchanged; it even 



74 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

loses its ability to perceive things if for a considerable time 
no qualitative changes occur. We have seen that our eye 
can take snap shots under conditions which would make 
this impossible for the photographic camera. But for time 
exposures, like those used in photographing faint stars, 
continued for hours, our eye is not suited. The eye, in 
such a case, would soon cease to distinguish anything. 
The eye completely fixed upon one set of objects soon sees 
their lighter parts darker, their darker parts lighter, their 
colored parts less colored — more grayish — that is, it sees 
everything gray on gray. This is technically called adapta- 
tion of the eye. Moving the eye suddenly, we become 
aware of this adaptation in peculiar after-images. 

Similar adaptations occur in other sense organs. Con- 
stant pressure on the skin, unchanging temperature of not 
extreme degree, permanent odors, cease to be perceived. 
But what is new, what differs from the condition which was 
in existence just before, is perceived at once ; and because 
of the sense organ's adaptation for something else, as a 
rule it is seen with particular intensity. This is obviously 
the most favorable equipment for a struggle for life. 
Nothing is more dangerous in battle than surprise. 

Our present knowledge of the mechanical, chemical, and 
physiological laws governing the peculiar dependence of 
the different kinds of sensations on special properties of 
the sense organs — that which is customarily called a 
theory of vision, a theory of audition, and so on, is rather 
unsatisfactory. Some thirty years ago much seemed to be 
perfectly explained which has since become mysterious 
again. This much has been learned, that the laws in 
question are far more complex than they were believed 
to be. 

Only one statement about eyesight can here be made 



SENSATION 75 

without fear of contradiction, that is, that the eye is a 
double instrument, one part of the organ serving in day- 
light, the other at dusk and in twilight. But this explains 
only a part of the total function of the eye. The retina of 
the eye consists of a great number of elements called rods 
and cones, forming a kind of mosaic. Twilight vision is 
served by the rods, which contain a sensitive substance 
called the visual purple. Most of the rods are in the 
peripheral parts of the retina, becoming less numerous 
toward the center. In the central area there are no rods 
at all. The only service of the rods is the mediation of a 
weak bluish-white sensation of various intensities, as in a 
moonlit landscape. Ordinary day vision is served by the 
cones, which are the only elements present in the center 
and become rare towards the periphery. All the variety 
of our color perception depends on the cones. In very 
faint illumination the colors of things cannot be perceived, 
although the things may still be distinguished from other 
objects. The rods alone are functioning then ; the cones 
have " struck work." Neither can the shape of things be 
perceived in dim light with normal definiteness, because 
the area of most distinct vision, the central area, contains 
only cones ; reading, for instance, is impossible at twilight. 
The astronomer, in order to observe a very faint star, must 
intentionally look at a point beside the star, because of the 
lack of rods in the central area. 

While the human eye normally possesses both rods and 
cones, certain species of animals have only one or the other 
kind of visual elements. Chickens and snakes possess 
only cones. This is the reason why chickens go to roost 
so promptly when the sun sets. Night animals, on the 
other hand, have mostly rods and few cones. This ex- 
plains why bats come out only after sunset. In very rare 



>je ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

cases human beings seem to possess only the rods, in cases 
of total color-blindness. The whole world appears color- 
less to them, only in shades of gray. They dislike greatly 
to be in brilliantly lighted places. They lack the keenness 
of normal eyesight because of the deficient function of 
the central area of the retina/ which is normally best 
equipped. 

A mechanical theory of hearing was worked out by 
Helmholtz nearly fifty years ago. This theory was at first 
generally accepted, but has in recent years lost much of 
its plausibility. The inner ear is a tube coiled up in the 
shape of a snailshell in order to find a better place in the 
lower part of the skull. Its coiling, of course, has little 
if any mechanical significance. The tube is divided into 
two parallel tubes by a kind of ribbon, the organ of Corti, 
containing the endings of the auditory neurons and also 
a comparatively tough membrane. Helmholtz made the 
hypothesis that the cross fibers of this membrane were 
under constant tension like the strings of a piano. The 
comparison with a piano was also suggested by the fact 
that the membrane in question tapers like the sounding 
board of a grand piano. As the piano resounds any tone 
or vowel, so this system of strings would resound any com- 
plex sound ; that is, each of the tones contained in the 
complex would be responded to by those fibers whose 
tension, length, and weight determine a corresponding 
frequency of vibration. The analyzing power of the ear 
is well explained by this hypothesis, but there are consid- 
erable difficulties left. For instance, the fibers of the 
membrane, even the longest, are rather short for the low 
tones to which they are assumed to be tuned. And for 
the assumption of a constant tension of these fibers there 
is no analogon in the whole realm of biology, since living 



SENSATION 77 

tissues always, sooner or later, adapt themselves and thus 
lose their tension. 

Another theory avoids these difficulties by merely assum- 
ing that the ribbon-like partition of the tube, when pushed 
by the fluid, moves out of its normal position only to a 
slight extent and then resists, and that therefore the dis- 
placement of the partition must proceed along the tube. 
If successive waves of greater and lesser amplitude, as we 
find them in every compound sound, act upon the tympa- 
num and indirectly upon the fluid in the tube, the displace- 
ment of the partition must proceed along the tube now 
farther, now less far, now again to another distance, and 
so on. Accordingly, one section of the partition is dis- 
placed more frequently, another section less frequently, 
others with still different frequencies in the same unit of 
time. This theory then makes the hypothesis that the 
frequency with which each section of the partition is jerked 
back and forth determines the pitch of a tone heard, and 
explains thus the analyzing power of the ear. What is 
chiefly needed in order to decide in favor of either of these 
or any othei: theory is a large increase in our knowledge 
through anatomical, physiological, and psychological in- 
vestigation. 

QUESTIONS 

46. What are the newly discovered kinds of sensations? 

47. How were they discovered? 

48. What are the cutaneous senses ? 

49. What is the objection to speaking of the cutaneous sense as 
one? 

50. What is pain? 

51. Of what importance are the labyrinth senses (other than hear- 
ing) to man and various animals ? 

52. What is meant by organic sensations? 

53. What are the four tastes? 



y^ ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

54. How does the sense of smell in man compare with that of ani- 
mals? 

55. Why is the color pyramid superior to the color cone? 

56. What are the chief symptoms of defective color vision? 

57. What is not meant, and what is meant, by color mixtures ? 

58. Why does music use only twelve tones? 

59. What is meant by the qualities of the tones of various instru- 
ments ? 

60. Are there any limits to the analyzing power of the ear? 

61. What is the exact number of classes of sensations ? 

62. How does the sensory equipment of man compare with that of 
the animals ? 

63. What do we learn from experiments on blind-born persons who 
have been operated on? 

64. In what experiences is time an attribute of sense perception ? 

65. Is tone relationship a property of sense or of thought? 

66. Can you illustrate the absolute sensitivity of our sense organs ? 

67. How does the range of applicability of our sense organs compare 
with that of tools and instruments ? 

68. Can you illustrate Weber's law ? 

69. What are the practical advantages obtained through Weber's 
law? 

70. Illustrate sensitiveness to change and movement. 

71. How is the chief diiference in the behavior of chickens and bats 
to be explained? 



§ 5. Imagination 

Mind is influenced not only by that which is present, but 
also by the past and — one may say — the future, and by 
that which exists at another place. Consciousness of this 
kind is called imagery. I imagine a lion and recognize 
that he looks different from a horse. I recall the room in 
a hotel where I have recently spent a night and see that 
it differs from my study. 

Imagery does not differ in content from percepts. 
There are as many kinds of images as there are sensations, 



IMAGINATION 79 

and their attributes are the same. Imagination differs 
from perception only through its independence of external 
conditions in the formation of new combinations out of the 
sensory elements which have previously been experienced. 
Although the kinds of content of imagery do not differ 
from those of perception, imagery differs from perception, 
as a rule, in such a characteristic manner that in ordinary 
life we are not likely to mistake an image for a percept or 
a percept for an image. The imagined sun lacks brilliancy. 
Its imagined heat does not burn. A glowing match, 
perceived, surpasses those images. Only in childhood, in 
dreams, and in particular individuals (artists, for example), 
and under particular circumstances (like the imaginative 
supplementing of that of which only parts have stimulated 
the sense organ) can imagery come near being compared 
and confused with percepts. Generally the difference in 
vividness remains great. A second difference is the lack 
of details of images. As a rule only a few parts of a rich 
complex of sensations reappear when an image takes the 
place of the original percept. And the selection of these 
details is usually most grotesque. A third characteristic 
of images is their instability, fleetingness. Compared with 
the persistence of a percept, an image can scarcely be said 
to have any definite make-up since its composition changes 
from moment to moment. Images come and go in spite of 
our desire to keep them. They change like kaleidoscopic 
figures. 

All this has its disadvantages ; but also its great advan- 
tages. Being at once pictures and mere abbreviations or 
symbols of things, images aid effectively in our handling 
of things. If they were exactly like percepts, they would 
deceive us, as hallucinations do. Their very lack of details 
and their fleetingness enable our mind to grasp a greater 



8o ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

multitude of things, to adjust itself more quickly and more 
comprehensively to its surroundings. 

Independence of external causes and frequent recurrence 
from internal causes give to our imagery the character of 
a permanent possession of the mind. Not every part of 
this imagery is actually made use of, since these parts are 
too numerous, but every part is always available for use. 
This leads to the question as to the nature of the images 
while mind is not conscious of them, particularly the na- 
ture of their nervous correlate. Ever since the discovery 
of ganglion cells and nerve fibers the naive conception has 
readily offered itself that every idea has its residence in a 
little group of cells, the idea of a dog in one, the idea of a 
tree in another, and so on. Some have calculated the 
number of cortical cells which would be necesssary in order 
to provide a sufficient number of residences for all the 
ideas acquired by a human being'during a long life. They 
have found that the cortical cells are numerous enough. 

But the matter is not quite so simple. Our ideas, being 
made up of many mental elements, overlap. If the idea 
of a dog has its residence here, the idea of a lion its resi- 
dence there, where, then, do we find the idea of a carni- 
vore, the idea of another kind of dog, the ideas of the 
individual dogs known by me, the ideas of other Carnivora, 
the idea of a mammal, of a vertebrate, of an animal in 
general? These ideas are interwoven in such manifold 
ways that it is difficult to assume that each should have 
its separate residence in the brain. It is still more difficult 
to apply this theory to the idea of barking, which can be 
imitated by man, being natural to a dog ; or to the idea 
of white, which belongs to some dogs, but also to the 
clouds, the snow, the lily. 

There are also anatomical difficulties. I look first at 



FEELING 8 1 

a dog, then at a goat. The elements of the retina which 
are stimulated are largely the same in both cases. This 
makes it difficult to understand why the nervous processes 
in the former case should all concentrate in one point of 
the cortex and in the latter case in an entirely different 
point. Or I hear the word boxwood and later the word 
woodbox. The anatomical difficulty is the same. 

The nervous correlates of ideas are obviously much 
more complicated than the theory of location in cell groups 
assumes. There can be no doubt that the nervous corre- 
late of an idea, even of an elementary image, is a pro- 
cess going on in a large number of connecting neurons in 
the higher nerve centers, often widely distributed, like the 
meshes of a net. The individual neurons in question do 
not belong exclusively to this one idea, but, entering into 
numerous other combinations with other neurons, belong 
to numerous ideas. The nervous correlate of a latent idea, 
which is not conscious but ready to enter consciousness at 
any time, is not a material substance stored away some- 
where, but a disposition on the part of neurons which have 
previously functioned together, to function again in the 
same order and connection. 

QUESTIONS 

72. In what respects do images not differ from percepts? 

73. In what three respects are images as a rule distinguishable from 
percepts ? 

74. What are the advantages of the characteristics of images? 

75. What is the nervous correlate of imagery? 

76. What is the nervous correlate of a latent idea? 

§ 6. Feeling 

Sensations and their images are closely related mental 
states. They are of the same kind. As a third class of 



82 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

elementary mental states the feelings of pleasantness and 
unpleasantness are customarily added. But it would prob- 
ably be more correct to say that these feelings are mental 
states of an altogether different kind, in comparison with 
which the distinction between sensations and images disap- 
pears. Pleasantness and unpleasantness never occur apart 
from sensation or imagery, whereas the latter states of con- 
sciousness may be free from any pleasantness or unpleas- 
antness. The pleasantness which I experience is always 
the pleasantness of something — of the taste of a peach, or 
of my good health, or of a message received. However, 
we must not conceive this dependence of pleasantness and 
unpleasantness as similar to the dependence of color or 
pitch or spatial extent or duration on the thing to which 
these belong as its qualities. Color, pitch, and these other 
qualities are essentially determined by objective conditions, 
the physical properties of the thing in question. But 
pleasantness or unpleasantness is only to a slight extent, 
if at all, determined by objective conditions. Honey tastes 
very much the same whenever we eat it. A tune sounds 
very much the same whenever we hear it. But these 
sensory experiences are, in consequence of subjective con- 
ditions, now highly pleasant, now almost indifferent, now 
decidedly unpleasant. 

The same colors and straight lines may be combined 
into a beautiful design or into an ugly one, the same 
descriptions of scenery and events into an attractive or 
a tedious book. A feeling which is already in existence 
may prevent the growth of an opposite feeling. On a 
rainy day we are likely to feel as if everything in the 
world were gray ; on a sunny spring day as if everything 
were rosy. The grief -stricken or desperate person experi- 
ences a given situation with other feelings than the person 



FEELING 83 

full of joy or hope. A particularly strong factor in our 
life of feeling is the frequency of recurrence of a situation. 
The most beautiful music suffers from being played at 
every concert and on every street, the most delicious dish 
from being put on the table every day. On the other 
hand, a bitter medicine gradually loses its unpleasantness, 
an unpleasant situation becomes indifferent to a person 
whose profession compels him to face it frequently. As 
the unchanging is at a disadvantage in our life of percep- 
tion, so is the recurrent in our life of feeling. 

The subjective factor which determines what feelings 
accompany our perceptions may be defined as the relation 
of the situation perceived to " the weal and woe of the 
organism. Pleasantness indicates that the impressions 
made upon the organism are adapted to the needs or 
capacities of the organism or at least to that part of the 
organism which is directly affected ; unpleasantness in- 
dicates that the impressions are ill adapted or harmful. 
Exceptions to this rule may be explained through the 
great complexity of the situations by which the organism 
is often confronted, and through the complications result- 
ing from the fact that the organism must adjust its activity 
not only to the present but also to the future, and not only 
in harmony with the present but also with past experience. 
Feeling is a reliable symptom and witness only for the 
present and local utility or inadequacy of the relation 
between the organism and the world. It is not a prophet 
of the future. Disease may result from eating sweets, 
whereas medicine is often bitter. 

The addition of feeling to our perceptions and images, 
because of the peculiarities just mentioned, brings about 
great complications in the make-up of our mental states 
and increases enormously the task of classifying and com- 



84 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

prehending our states of consciousness. The feelings 
accompanying images are originally the same as those 
which accompanied the perceptions in question. The 
memory image of the pain of flogging is unpleasant be- 
cause the original pain was unpleasant. But the manifold 
connections of the images often result in unexpected feel- 
ings. The memory of an unpleasant experience may be- 
come a source of pleasure through the additional thought 
that the experience was the result of some folly of which 
one is no longer capable. The feeling accompanying a 
perception can change in a similar manner. A saturated 
green, as the color of a pasture or of an ornament, is pleas- 
ant ; as the color of a girl's cheek it would be highly un- 
pleasant. 

Not only are perceptions and images themselves sources 
of pleasantness and unpleasantness, but also their rela- 
tions, spatial, temporal, and conceptual. The pleasure 
which we derive from looking at a picture or a landscape 
illustrates the dependence on spatial relations. The pleas- 
ure of a symphony or dramatic performance depends 
largely on temporal relations. Jokes and puzzles please 
us chiefly because of their conceptual, logical relations. 
It is plain, then, that every complex of sensations, sup- 
plemented by a large number of images, must become a 
stage, so to speak, on which countless scores of feelings 
play their parts. In so far as their perceptual and idea- 
tional bases may be kept apart, we may count as many of 
these feehngs as we distinguish percepts or ideas. In so 
far as all these feelings are either pleasantness or un- 
pleasantness, we may speak of the feelings as being only 
two in number. This may explain to us why such mental 
states as love, pride, sentimentality, the joy of the audience 
in a theater, the interest of the reader of a biography, 



WILLING 85 

appear at once simple enough, unitary enough, and yet in- 
exhaustibly replete with contents and difficult of compre- 
hension. This also explains the opposite views of so 
many writers, of whom some assert that the number of 
feelings is infinitely large, others that there are only two, 
pleasantness and unpleasantness, which may accompany 
an infinite number of sensation complexes. The differ- 
ence between these writers is much less than appears 
from their words. 

QUESTIONS 

*JT. How are pleasantness and unpleasantness related to sensational 
states of consciousness ? 

78. How are pleasantness and unpleasantness related to objective 
conditions ? 

79. How does the repetition of an experience influence its pleas- 
antness or unpleasantness ? 

80. Whatjs the general subjective condition of pleasantness and 
unpleasantness ? 

81. Is feeling a prophet of the future? 

82. What difficulties does the existence of feeling cause the psycholo- 
gist? 

Z-if, Are there more than two feelings? 



§ 7. Willing 

Willing is usually mentioned as being a distinct class of 
mental states. However, willing is not a special class in 
the sense in which perceptions, images, and feelings are 
called classes. To understand willing, let us consider 
certain typical actions of an infant which are based on 
inborn nervous connections. What do we mean by the 
feeding instinct? We mean unpleasant sensations of 
hunger and thirst followed by various movements of arms 



S6 ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE 

and legs, of crying, of sucking, until the unpleasantness 
of the situation ceases. The movements themselves are 
nothing mental. But while they are occurring they become 
known as kinesthetic sensations, partly also as visual or 
auditory sensations. Two classes of sensations may there- 
fore be distinguished in any instinctive activity : those which 
correspond to the sensory phase of the reflexes in question, 
and those which result from the reflex movements. After 
frequent occurrence of these reflex movements, images of 
various parts of the whole satisfying process remain, and 
these, or some of them, become conscious even before any 
of the movements occur. For example, as soon as hunger 
is experienced the infant has also an image of the bottle, 
of the mother bringing it, of his own movements of grasp- 
ing, sucking, and so on. The instinctive act has then 
been replaced by an act of will. Willingj therefore^ may 
be defined as instinct which foresees its end. 

No new kind of mental state can be discovered in will- 
ing. There is nothing but sensations, feelings of pleas- 
antness-unpleasantness, and images. If we give| to such 
a combination of these three kinds of mental states the 
name of willing, we justify this new name by the fact that 
such combinations are the most original, the earliest con- 
scious states which have occurred in our mental life. The 
first conciousness accompanies instinctive activity, and 
immediately a simple form of willing is made possible. From 
the genetic point of view, that is, if we are interested in 
the growth of our consciousness, willing is the most ele- 
mentary form of consciousness. Perceptions, images, and 
feelings did not exist separately for some months or years 
to become afterwards united into willing. Willing was 
there when consciousness first awoke. On the other hand, 
if we are interested in describing the make-up of our pres- 



ATTENTION gy 

ent mental life, — that is, from the point of view of the 
psychologist searching for concepts of mental states, — 
sensations, images, and feelings are the most elementary 
forms of consciousness. 

There is no will in the sense of a simple faculty, always 
remaining identical with itself, merely changing its direc- 
tion and now applying itself to this thing, now to that thing. 
Will is an abstract word, referring to that which is common 
to all states of willing ; but, Hkc all abstractions, it does 
not possess any real existence apart from the realities from 
which it has been abstracted, that is, from the particular 
cases of willing occurring in each person's life. Of course, 
there is no objection to using the abstract word will with- 
out explaining each time that it is an abstraction. We 
need not hesitate to refer to typical differences between 
the cases of willing most frequently observed in one person 
and those observed in another by saying that one has a 
strong will, the other a weak, a vacillating will. 

QUESTIONS 

84. How may willing be defined ? 

85. Is willing an elementary kind of consciousness? 

86. Why is it wrong to answer the preceding question simply by yes 
or no ? 

87. What is the will? 

B. THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

§ 8. Attention 

A ship, under the influence of several forces — the screw, 
the wind, the current — follows all of them simultaneously, 
and the place which it reaches after a certain time is the 
same as that which it would have reached if these forces 
had acted, each for the same length of time, but one after 



88 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

the other. External things, whenever they are under the 
influence of several forces, are governed by the law of the 
resultant. The mind's mode of response is entirely dif- 
ferent. When there are many things to see, as a crowd of 
actors on the stage, many things to hear, as a chorus and 
orchestra, and in addition some whispered words of our 
neighbor, the result is by no means the same as if all these 
impressions acted upon our mind successively. If time 
enough is given, our mind will successively respond to 
each of these impressions of sight and hearing. But if the 
response must occur quickly and be done with, it is re- 
stricted to a part of the impressions made by the external 
objects. A few of these impressions, specially favored by 
circumstances, affect our consciousness at the expense of 
the others. The latter are not entirely lost for our mind ; 
but they fail to call forth separate responses, they fuse into 
a mere background upon which the favored impressions 
make their appearance. They are often spoken of as the 
fringe of the clearly conscious mental states. 

One might call this selective effect the narrowness or 
f ocalness of consciousness ; in ordinary life it is called at- 
tention. We say that attention is given to certain contents, 
and that the others are not attended to, that they are under 
the influence of inattention. There is no similar phenome- 
non in the whole inorganic world. In our mental life 
nothing is more ordinary. I look up and notice many 
things. But many more are projected upon my retina 
without succeeding in becoming noticed. When reading a 
book I cannot accomplish everything that I wish I could. 
Giving attention to the meaning, I fail to become conscious 
of the beauty of style. Looking for typographical errors, 
I fail to understand the logical connection of the sentences. 
For each purpose a new reading is necessary. Mental work 



ATTENTION 89 

requires the exclusion of piano music and crying babies. 
Thinking is not so easy while we are performing a gymnastic 
feat or walking at a rapid gait. When we are listening to 
difficult music, we shut our eyes. When a momentous 
question, a dangerous task, presents itself, we are in danger 
of losing our head ; that is, being occupied by ideas of the 
magnitude of the event, we fail to become conscious of 
thoughts and memories of the simplest and most ordinary 
kind. 

The popular view of attention is that it is an independent 
being, separate from the contents of the mind. Attention 
stands at the helm, and as the mind desires these or those 
contents, attention changes the ship's course. This, of 
course, is pure mythology. The enhancement and im- 
pairment of impressions to which we refer in speaking of 
attention and inattention are not a peculiar activity of mind ; 
they are simply the effects of peculiar relations existing be- 
tween the impressions themselves. A few of these rela- 
tions may be briefly discussed. 

Whatever situation is capable of being a source of 
pleasantness or unpleasantness, is also likely to become 
enhanced in vividness, so that one may say that the value 
of an impression for our life of feeling is one of the factors 
determining attention. Any remark of a person near by, 
although merely whispered and hardly perceived by others, 
quickly rises to a high degree of consciousness in my mind 
if it concerns my reputation. That which we have expe- 
rienced frequently, no longer causes much pleasantness or 
unpleasantness ; and in accordance with this, it is not likely 
to be attended to. 

This parallelism between feeling and attention is ex- 
pressed in the word interest. We are interested in those 
things which conform to our habits of thinking. Because 



90 



LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 



of this conformity they are useful to us at the present mo- 
ment of our life, and therefore pleasant. Because of this 
conformity with our habits they become vividly conscious — 
they are attended to. What is unrelated to our habits of 
thinking is not useful to us at the moment and is therefore 
indifferent; and being unrelated, it attracts no attention. 
Everybody knows how readily the average member of a 
political party assents to the assertions made by the party 
leader, how readily the adherent of a religious faith accepts 
instances proving its correctness, how he unintentionally 
ignores anything which he cannot accept without opposi- 
tion or discomfort. 

Another factor determining attention is the relation of a 
new impression to the thoughts occupying the mind at the 
moment when the impression was made. That which is 
conscious prepares the path over which everything related ' 
may enter. Ordinarily the ticking of a clock remains 
unnoticed. But let the person think of the clock, or of 
time, and the next tick is clearly perceived. In order to 
notice a weak tone in a complicated chord, or a melody 
in polyphonic music, it is well to hear the tone or the 
melody first in isolation and try to keep it in mind until 
the chord or the music is played. A slight difference 
in the color of two leaves remains unnoticed ; but if we 
are thinking of a color difference just before the leaves 
are shown to us, it becomes at once vivid in our conscious- 
ness. The puzzle pictures common in certain popular 
magazines would never convey the intended meaning to us, 
if we were not invited by the text to think of various things 
which they might represent. If we know beforehand in 
what order a lecturer will present his arguments to us, we 
can pay attention to the lecture much more easily and un- 
derstand it better. 



ATTENTION 9 1 

Attention is usually accompanied by numerous instinc- 
tive muscular activities, which contribute toward the con- 
tinuation and toward a greater distinctness or intensity of 
the impression. When our visual organs are stimulated, 
the head and the eyes turn so that the impression may be 
received at the point of keenest vision. If the ear is 
stimulated, the head turns so that both ears assume the 
most favorable position with respect to the source of 
sound. When images occupy the mind, the eyes are 
directed at an indifferent, uninteresting object, or they are 
closed, the lips are pressed together, the limbs assume a 
position of rest All this tends to keep away avoidable 
stimulation of the sense -organs of the body. These in- 
stinctive movements are, of course, perceived as kines- 
thetic sensations, as varied forms of strain, of activity. 
Thus they give rise to the erroneous view that attention 
is a peculiar activity of the mind's own content. This 
view is most emphatically expressed in the phrase " vol- 
untary attention.** It often happens that we become con- 
scious of the muscular adaptation characteristic of attention 
before the mental state to which attention is given has 
appeared. For example, we see lightning and at once 
imagine the thunder and the muscular adaptions of the 
ear and other parts of the body which generally occur 
when it thunders. Or we hear our teacher's voice telling 
us that he will give an explanation, and we imagine the 
strain, the activity of our muscles, which begins as soon as 
he starts giving the explanation. This foreseeing of our 
activities we have above called willing. The foreseeing 
of our attention is the will to give attention^ is voluntary 
attention. 

It is a peculiar fact that vividness of a certain thought 
or even a class of thoughts is never much prolonged. 



92 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

Other impressions or ideas take the place of those which 
are now focal. Under the most favorable conditions, the 
same ideas reappear again and again. This limited dura- 
tion of attention is most conspicuous in children and is one 
of the greatest obstacles which the teacher has to over- 
come. Repeated orders to be attentive are of small value. 
They tend to call up a general notion of the matter which 
is being taught, and thus make it easier for the ideas pre- 
sented by the teacher to enter consciousness. But the 
effect is not lasting because the very thought of being 
attentive cannot itself have a long duration. It is there- 
fore preferable to take into account the nature of attending, 
and in accordance with it, to provide a certain change in 
the ideas presented — to present the matter in an interest- 
ing way. 

QUESTIONS 

88. What essential diiference between mental function and mechan- 
ical function is referred to by the word attention f 

89. Can you illustrate the chief facts of attention and inattention? 

90. Can you illustrate the parallelism between the laws of feeling and 
of attention ? 

91. How is attention mentally prepared for? 

92. How is attention assisted by special muscular activity? 

93. What causes the illusion that attention is a voluntary activity of 
the mind upon its contents ? 

94. What practical problems are connected with the law of the 
duration of attention ? 



V 




While attention means limitation, memory means ex- 
pansion. From the enormous number of impressions 
calling simultaneously for response, the mind selects a 
small group of those related to its present needs. But the 
mind may go beyond the limits of that which is presented 



MEMORY 93 

and respond to impressions of a former time. We then 
speak of memory. When I hear the first verse of a poem 
which I have previously heard or read more than once, I 
continue to hear, in imagination, the following verses 
although the reader has stopped. When I see a black 
cloud drawing over the sky and the trees bowing under the 
pressure of the wind, I know that a thunderstorm is ap- 
proaching. When I smell carbolic acid or iodoform, I look 
for a person wearing a bandage. In every case the mind 
tends toward expansion beyond the limits of the data pre- 
sented at the moment. The mind thus restores the con- 
nections in which the accidentally isolated object of pres- 
ent interest has been experienced with other objects in 
the past. 

We refer to this ability of expansion by the term 
memory y to the actual process of expansion by reproduction 
or association. The immense importance of memory for 
life is easily understood. Nature repeats itself — not 
without some variations of the accompanying phenomena ; 
but no group of phenomena, aside from such variations, 
fails to recur at frequent intervals. In reproducing what 
previously existed under similar conditions, our mind pos- 
sesses, as a rule, a real knowledge of what now exists but 
happens to remain hidden, and of what is about to occur. 
Thus our mind adapts itself to those parts of the world 
which are for spatial or temporal reasons beyond the 
reach of our sense organs. 

A special case of reproduction deserves to be mentioned 
because of its frequency of application. \ Two things may 
possess one common part while completely differing in 
other parts : for example, two words that rhyme, or a 
photograph and an oil portrait, or either of these and the 
face of the original. Let us call the parts of one thing 



94 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

abed, those of another cdef. It easily happens that by 
mediation of the common parts, cd, the train of thought is 
carried from ab to ef. Thus we may say that our train 
of thought is determined, not only by simultaneity of 
previous experience, which is often quite fortuitous, but 
also by similarity, by essential connection, by relationship. 

The possibilities of reproduction are, of course, very 
numerous in each case of experience. At present I see 
before me some books of reference, on the hill at a dis- 
tance a house partly hidden by trees, and many other 
things. All these have previously been in my mind, each 
in various temporal or essential connections with other 
things. An immense number of images might therefore 
be reproduced now in my mind. That as a matter of fact 
I do not become conscious of all of them needs no further 
explanation. It has been spoken of before when we dis- 
cussed the limitation, the focalness of consciousness, that 
is, attention. We have also stated some of the rules de- 
termining the selection among these many possibilities. 
Let us here state these rules more definitely. 

Whatever tends to bring about strong feeling, also tends 
to be reproduced. A brilliant success, but also a humiliat- 
ing defeat, are not easily forgotten. They are always lying 
in ambush, so to speak, ready for the least opportunity. 
As in attention, so here even more, pleasant thoughts show 
this tendency more strongly than unpleasant ones. What 
is unpleasant is soon repressed. This is illustrated by such 
facts as the healing power of time, the painting of the 
future in glowing colors, the unfailing belief that advancing 
age has in the good old time. 

A second law governing reproduction may be called the 
set of the mind. When a railway trahi enters a large 
station, there are many paths over which it might 



MEMORY 95 

pass ; but its actual path depends on the position which 
was given to the switches immediately before the train's 
arrival. In a similar manner the path taken by the mind 
depends on the set established just a few seconds or 
minutes before by the contents of the mind. If during a 
conversation in English a French word is unexpectedly 
pronounced by some one, the other people, though perfectly 
familiar with the French language, may fail to understand 
it. The French sounds are unexpected —the track is there, 
but the switch is not properly set — and consequently the 
sounds remain ineffective. A certain book seen on my 
desk calls up associated ideas very different from those 
which are produced when I see it in the bookstore. The 
same thought leads to one conclusion in the dark or in a 
dream, to another conclusion in daylight or in the waking 
state. Every student is familiar with the difficulty of be- 
coming conscious of the right kind of ideas after having 
just gone from one recitation , room to another. After a 
few minutes the new set of the mind is established, and the 
difficulty has disappeared. 

Many other factors are to be mentioned as influencing 
the train of thought. During the last decades many ex- 
perimental investigations have been devoted, with much 
success, to their exact determination. Numerous methods 
have been used, some being only slight modifications of 
the conditions under which ideas are reproduced in ordi- 
nary life, others being more artificial in order to yield 
answers to special questions to which the other methods 
are not applicable. The common involuntary reproduction 
of ideas by words or pictures shown has been used in order 
to determine how this reproduction varies with different 
individuals under different circumstances, how much time 
it requires, and so on. Voluntary reproduction of impres- 



96 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

sions that have just been made (as used in school in dicta- 
tion) has been used by presenting, optically or through 
speech, words, syllables, numbers, or pictures and telling 
the subject to write down everything remembered. The 
quantity of the matter retained, and the number and kind 
of errors, then permit many important conclusions. Also 
whole poems or pieces of prose have been memorized, and 
answers have been found to questions as to the length of 
time necessary for such memorizing under different con- 
ditions, and the number of additional repetitions needed to 
make the material learned available again after a greater 
number of days or weeks. The acquisition of the vocabu- 
lary of a foreign language or of a set of historical dates has 
been developed into a special method of hitting or missing. 
The material to be learned has been presented in pairs, 
and the number of pairs has been counted of which one 
element causes the mental reproduction of the other. By 
all these methods psychologists have definitely secured 
many rules which had been derived from earlier, less reli- 
able experiences. Many new facts have also been discov- 
ered. Let us give a brief account of the results'of this work. 
That which has been in consciousness most recently is, 
other conditions being equal, reproduced most readily. For 
some time the memorized material is reproduced so easily 
that it seems to have found a permanent place in our mind. 
Soon, however, it begins to be forgotten. At first this for- 
getting goes on with great rapidity ; but it becomes slower 
and slower, so that a person retains very little less after 
thirteen months than after twelve. Even after twenty years 
definite traces of a single former memorizing have been 
proved to exist. Nothing, therefore, is likely to be com- 
pletely lost, although voluntary reproduction has long since 
become impossible. 



MEMORY 97 

The most important factor contributing toward certainty 
of reproduction is frequent repetition, of course with atten- 
tion, for without attention no memorizing is possible. The 
experimental investigation of the influence of repetition has 
yielded, among minor ones, two particularly interesting re- 
sults. One of them justifies an educational practice which 
had already been adopted by teachers because it seemed 
to be advisable. In order to memorize any material we 
should not try to force the desired end by accumulated 
repetition without pause. It is much more economical to 
devote a short time to learning, long enough for a few 
repetitions, to do this again after a pause of some hours or 
days and again after the same interval, until the desired 
effect is obtained. The total time required for obtaining 
this effect would be much greater if the total process of 
memorizing were to occur at one time without intermis- 
sion. 

Another result of experimental investigation is contrary 
to the tradition of educational practice. It has been proved 
that, in order to learn a long poem, monologue, or piece 
of prose, this should not be divided into smaller parts. It 
is uneconomical to learn each stanza or sentence separately. 
The whole should always be read from the beginning to 
the end, without introducing points of division which are 
not desired at the time of reproduction. 

The method of involuntary reproduction has recently 
been applied to a problem of much practical significance. 
The attempt has been made to reveal thus associations of 
ideas which have been firmly established, but which the 
subject has strong reasons for keeping secret, for instance, 
the ideas forming the memory of a crime which he has 
committed. He is asked to tell or write as quickly as pos- 
sible a word suggested by each of a great number of words 



98 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

presented to him in succession. Among these latter words 
are given some which have a special relation to the knowl- 
edge which the subject is suspected of possessing. If the 
suspicion is correct, it is likely to be shown in either of two 
ways in the answers to these test words. Either the ex- 
pected (for instance incriminating) answers are actually 
given and reveal thus the subject's knowledge ; or if these 
answers are inhibited and voluntarily replaced by others 
of a more innocent appearance, the time of answering, the 
reaction time, is considerably increased. It may also hap- 
pen that the subject, under these conditions, becomes con- 
fused and gives absolutely meaningless answers. 

That the individual differences in the ability to memorize 
are very great, has always been observed. Modern psy- 
chology, however, has added to this knowledge an insight 
into the various kinds of differences and their proper 
causes. Let us notice the perception and imagery types. 
There are people who perceive and imagine very readily 
visual sensation groups. They give attention to the shape 
and color of the things rather than to any other sensible 
qualities, and they imagine visual shape or color very 
vividly so that the right and left, the above and below, 
of their imagery is clearly in their minds. In others audi- 
tory perception and auditory imagery are very vivid ; in a 
third class of persons the same is to be said of kinesthetic 
mental states. We therefore distinguish visual, auditory, 
and kinesthetic types of consciousness. There may be 
also gustatory, olfactory, and other types, but they are of 
little practical importance. Extreme cases, where one of 
these classes of mental states is extraordinarily developed 
at the expense of all others, are rare. Eminent abiUty in art 
or music probably depends on such development. Generally, 
one kind of imagery is but slightly superior to the rest. 



PRACTICE 99 

There seem to be further individual differences with 
respect to a predominance of either word images or images 
of the things of nature. All these differences bring about 
numerous variations of memory. The visual type is able 
to play chess blindfolded, to repeat a memorized series 
of numbers somewhat slowly also backwards. To the 
auditory type these performances seem miraculous. But 
the former in recalling easily confuses similar looking 
elements of such a memorized series, which the latter 
would certainly distinguish because of their difference in 
sound. The auditory type, however, confuses elements 
that are similar in sound or accent. The auditory and 
kinesthetic types depend largely on reading aloud for 
memorizing, while the visual type is scarcely aided by it. 
These differences are of much importance for all the 
various kinds of professional activity. 

QUESTIONS 

95. In what respect is memory the opposite of attention? 

96. In what respect is reproduction by similarity superior to repro- 
duction by simultaneity of previous experience? 

97. Can you illustrate the relations between feeling and memory? 

98. What is meant by the set of the mind? 

99. Illustrate the dependence of memory on recency. 
100. Illustrate the two laws of repetition. 

loi. What method has been devised for the diagnosis of memory 
which is not voluntarily revealed? 

102. What is meant by perception or imagery types? 

103. Can you illustrate the practical importance of the types of con- 
sciousness ? 

§ 10. Practice 

The word practice refers to a number of different phe- 
nomena having this in common, that they occur when the 
same mental function is frequently repeated, either in im- 



100 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

mediate succession or with moderately long intermissions. 
To a large extent practice is identical with the selective 
and supplementing functions of the mind which are dis- 
cussed above. But certain effects included in the term 
practice cannot be understood thus and must be regarded 
as the signs of a more fundamental law of the mind. Set- 
ting aside, however, the distinction between fundamental 
and secondary regularities of mental function, two facts 
should be mentioned here. 

The more frequently the same task is imposed upon our 
mind, the more perfectly — this is the first fact — is it 
carried out. But perfection has various aspects. So 
far as sense perception is concerned, perfection means a 
lowering of the so-called threshold of perception and 
of discrimination, especially the latter. Weaker sounds, 
lights, tastes are perceived; smaller differences of color, 
tone, weight, movement, size are correctly named. Per- 
fection means also greater quickness of response. The 
same number of elements is perceived in less time, is 
memorized or reproduced more quickly. The rapidity 
of reading, thinking, writing, and other skillful movements 
is increased. Perfection means, further, an enlargement 
of the scope of the situation responded to. We are con- 
scious of a greater number of its parts after having 
perceived a certain thing repeatedly. Of different things 
a greater number are simultaneously perceived. After 
repeated performance of a certain act, we take into ac- 
count a greater number of circumstances and adapt it to 
them. That a certain activity which has been engaged 
in repeatedly can be continued longer at one time, may 
also be mentioned in this connection. So far as definite 
purposes are concerned, these are accomplished more and 
more economically and accurately, that is, with less ex- 



PRACTICE lOI 

penditure of energy, with stricter avoidance of unneces- 
sary movements, with a decreasing number of errors. 

A second phenomenon of practice is the simplification 
of the conscious processes preceding purposive action. 
Unless there are particular causes, as anticipatory ideas 
or an extraordinary special interest, that which has often 
occurred tends to remain unconscious, so that the response 
may be called automatic. The ticking of a clock, the 
noise of a street, the laughing of a mountain stream, soon 
cease to be attended to, although attention to them is al- 
ways possible. Reading, writing, arithmetical work, when 
being learned, include a vast number of states of conscious- 
ness which no longer occur when these activities are per- 
formed by a grown person. After thousand-fold repetition 
great rapidity of execution results from the omission of 
a multitude of mental states without which the perform- 
ance could not originally have been brought about. But 
the original effects of those lost mental states are not at 
all lost. The same movements are carried out with the same 
accuracy as if they were governed by those mental states. 
Each single letter, even each word, is not found in the 
consciousness of a person who reads rapidly, and yet he 
pronounces the word correctly. Each single note or 
printed chord is not in the consciousness of the pianist, 
and yet he plays the chord correctly. The same holds for 
all complex movements that are slowly learned and often 
repeated, as knitting, sewing, swimming, horseback riding, 
dancing, skating. They finally require a minimum of men- 
tal energy. They become comparable in this respect to 
the native, instinctive movements; but in order to dis- 
tinguish them from the native movements independent of 
consciousness, we call them automatic movements. 

Practice, therefore, is a general term referring to the 



102 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

wonderful adaptation of mind to the external world 
for the purpose of self-preservation. By association and 
reproduction mind adapts itself to frequently recurring 
events and anticipates them. By practice it adapts itself 
to those events which recur with particular frequency and 
which are of particular importance. These events are 
through practice comprehended more delicately, more 
quickly, and more inclusively. They are responded to in a 
manner tested as the most fitting and most prompt, and 
yet requiring only a minimum of mental energy, of which 
more than a limited amount is at no time available. With- 
out having to neglect the ordinary and as such important, 
mind has energy left to devote to that which is new, un- 
usual, surprising. 

QUESTIONS 

104. What are the effects of practice on sense perception? 

105. Illustrate how practice simplifies thought. 

§ II. Fatigue 

The conditions of fatigue are similar to those of practice. 
Fatigue occurs when mental functions are repeated too 
many times in immediate succession. But the result is 
not perfection, but deterioration of the performance. The 
sensitivity for weak stimuli or small differences of stimuli 
disappears. Attention is decreased, that is, fewer mental 
states are vivid, and they are also less vivid. New ideas do 
not easily enter consciousness. Reproduction, as in the 
processes of reading and arithmetic, is slow and inaccurate. 
Action becomes slow and awkward, and may cease al- 
together. 

Fatigue is obviously a protective measure. When the 
continued performance of a task threatens to exhaust the 
organs, their resistance to the call for action increases, 



FATIGUE 103 

and finally they completely refuse to respond. Because 
of the continuity of all organic processes, this refusal in 
extreme cases is impossible without a lesser degree of re- 
fusal before the extreme is reached. The first indications 
of fatigue thus appear soon after a prolonged mental 
activity has begun, as a diminution of the effects of prac- 
tice. This leads often to the astonishing consequence 
that a certain performance is executed better at the be- 
ginning of a practice period than at the end of the preceding 
period. The acquired practice is then still effective, while 
the effect of fatigue is absent. This experience does not 
justify the conclusion that skill has increased during the 
time of intermission. 

Because of the great importance of fatigue for mental 
and bodily health, numerous investigators have in recent 
years undertaken to study it more closely by experimental 
methods. Especially fatigue caused by school work has 
been much under discussion in scientific and popular peri^ 
odicals and even in the daily press. Little progress, how- 
ever, has been made in our knowledge of fatigue. It has 
proved difficult to find reliable methods of measuring it, 
and the great complexity of the conditions has interfered 
with the interpretation of the experimental results. The 
attempt has been made to measure mental fatigue indirectly 
by measuring the muscular fatigue caused by repeatedly 
lifting a weight ; or by measuring the minimum distance 
of two touches on the skin recognizable as two. Although 
there are probably relations of cutaneous sensitivity and of 
muscular fatigue to mental fatigue, they are not definitely 
known, and by some their very existence is doubted. 
Other tests used for the measurement of fatigue are 
adding numbers of several digits, adding a long series of 
digits, and taking dictation. In these tests the mental 



104 LAWS OF MENTAL LIFE 

work is very one-sided and too simple to permit conclu- 
sions with regard to fatigue under ordinary conditions of 
mental activity. A disturbing element in these tests is the 
rapid perfection of the work under the influence of prac- 
tice. If we choose more complicated tasks such as trans- 
lation into another language, mathematical problems, or 
filling in words which have been omitted from a certain 
text, we cannot easily make two tasks sufficiently alike to 
be able to compare the results obtained from them. 

But none of these methods solve the chief problem,^ 
namely, the determination of the point at which fatigue 
begins to be permanently harmful. There is no doubt 
that in moderate degrees fatigue is a perfectly normal 
phenomenon, involving no detriment to our future effi- 
ciency. Otherwise most people would be wrecked before 
they are fully grown. The experience of athletes and sol- 
diers shows that even rather high degrees of fatigue are 
compatible with the normal growth of bodily strength. 
The same may be true for mental life. The assertions 
of great damage done to children by school work are — so 
far as normal children are concerned — certainly greatly 
exaggerated. 

QUESTIONS 

io6. What are the effects of fatigue? 

107. Into what complication does fatigue enter with practice? 

108. What attempts have been made at measuring fatigue? 

109. What is the chief problem in connection with fatigue? 
no. Is the fatigue of school work harmful? 



PERCEPTION AND MOVEMENT 105 

C, THE EXPRESSIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 
§ 12. Perception and Movement 

The impression upon the mind is not the ultimate end 
of the nervous processes originating in the sense organs. 
The end is rather activity of the motor organs of the body, 
which we may here, accepting the naive conception of mat- 
ter and mind, regard as effects or expressions of mind. 
The complications of the mental life of a grown person tend 
to make this connection between mind and motor activity 
often obscure and doubtful. It seems that often we receive 
impressions quite passively. Nevertheless the connection' 
exists. Every impression made upon the mind by the 
external world is in some way responded to by move- 
ment. The movement may occur in the stimulated sense 
organ itself, in the arms, the hands, the fingers, the legs, 
the feet, the head, the vocal organs, also in the internal or- 
gans, the heart, the blood vessels, the alimentary canal, the 
lungs. The significance of many of these movements is 
but insufficiently understood, for example, laughing, weep- 
ing, blushing, trembling. But those movements which 
directly affect the organism's surroundings are easily under- 
stood. They may be classed under two headings, self-pres- 
ervation and play. Another way of classifying them is to 
distinguish movement toward the object perceived and 
movement away from the object, without taking these 
terms in too literal a sense. 

Innumerable illustrations for these classes of movements 
suggest themselves. A piece of bread put on the back of 
the tongue is moved down the esophagus by the proper 
muscular contractions. A particle moving into the wrong 
passage is thrown out again by coughing. If the palm of 



I06 EXPRESSIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

an infant is gently stroked, the hand closes and takes hold 
of the stroking finger. If the palm is scratched, the hand 
quickly recedes. A mild and steady light attracts the child's 
eye, which follows the movements of the light. From an 
intense and flickering light the eye turns away. A piece 
of sugar is kept in the child's mouth and moved about by 
the tongue until it is dissolved. A bitter root causes the 
lips to recede and the tongue to make a pushing move- 
ment. If the child is hungry, he cries, kicks, and strikes 
out with his arms until he is fed. After being fed 
he lies still so that digestion is not interfered with by 
the blood being drawn into the peripheral parts of the 
body. 

Movements which do not serve self-preservation so di- 
rectly are called play. When a cat perceives a mouse, she 
jumps at it and catches it. But before eating it, she usually 
lets it loose and catches it again, and so on several times. 
When she finds a ball of yarn, she treats it similarly, al- 
though she must know that it is not edible. A dog gnaws 
a bone because this contributes to his nutrition. But he 
also gnaws table legs and rugs, although these have no 
nutritive value. He chases rabbits and other small ani- 
mals which he can eat. But he chases no less eagerly 
other dogs, wagons, cyclists, horses, none of which serve 
as articles of food for him. The same is true for man. 
The infant's kicking, the small child's breaking of his toys, 
do not have any immediate value. Men and animals re- 
spond to things not only by fighting, but also by play. The 
significance of playful movements is to be found in the 
exercise, the development, and the conservation of the 
abilities given to them by nature. As in the movements of 
self-preservation, so in play pleasantness and unpleasant- 
ness make their appearance. Extensive exercise of nat- 



PERCEPTION AND MOVEMENT 107 

ural abilities is highly pleasant, enforced inactivity equally 
unpleasant. 

But play is more than a general exercise of the bodily 
organs. It is a preparation for the specialized activities 
of the serious part of Ufe. The animal meets in play things 
which behave very much like those things which it has to 
obtain for food. So it learns to obtain food at a time when 
food is not yet needed. It learns to defend itself when no 
one yet attacks it. The biological significance of the play 
movements obviously consists in this preparation for the 
special activities of life. Those animals which do not 
possess a strong tendency to play are thus at a disadvan- 
tage in the struggle for life, because they miss the 
opportunity for preparation. Serious activity and play 
accompany man and animal all through life ; but the pro- 
portion changes. The young are taken care of by their 
parents, and play may therefore prevail. With maturity 
this changes, and less time is left for play. 

All these movements of self-preservation and of play 
are natural inherited responses of the organism to its 
environment. Many of them do not appear at the very 
entrance into life, but at different stages of age and growth. 
They are the raw material from which all conduct is 
derived and built up. Their nervous conditions are the 
nervous processes in the reflex arches of the subcortical 
nerve centers. From the points of sensory stimulation, 
the nervous processes are carried into definite muscle 
groups so that definite movements occur. These move- 
ments are called reflexes or instincts according as they are 
rather simple or more complex. Both reflexes and in- 
stincts are inherited movements following in direct response 
upon sensory stimulation. 



I08 EXPRESSIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 



QUESTIONS 

111. What is the ultimate end of every nervous process ? 

112. What are typical movements of self-preservation ? 

113. What are typical movements of play? 

114. Is play more than a general exercise of the body? 

115. Are all inherited movements possible immediately after birth? 

116. What is the diiference between reflexes and instincts? 



§ 13. Thought and Movement 

Consciousness is not a factor in reflex or instinctive 
movements. But these movements soon enter into a two- 
fold connection with consciousness, (i) When such move- 
ments occur, they often result in consciousness. They are 
either seen, or perceived through the sense of touch or 
through the kinesthetic sense. These images of the move- 
ment become associated with the images originating from 
the sensory stimulations which give rise to the movement. 
(2) In consequence of this association the visual, touch, 
and kinesthetic images of the movement, particularly the 
most common, the kinesthetic, may themselves produce 
this movement to which they owe their existence. The 
mere thought of how one feels when performing a move- 
ment brings about, if it is vivid enough, the movement it- 
self. The hearing of dance music awakens the kinesthetic 
ideas of dancing, and these become real movements, al- 
though perhaps only swaying movements of the body or 
the head. Vivi'd thinking similarly brings about whisper- 
ing of words. Even vivid imagination of the movement of 
a foreign body has such powers. A passionate and excited 
billiard player thinks of the hoped-for movement of the 
running ball. This leads to imagery of a similar move- 
ment of his own body, and the result is the actual move- 



THOUGHT AND MOVEMENT 109 

ment, rather ridiculous to the onlooker because it is entirely 
purposeless. 

Through this connection with consciousness instinctive 
movements become voluntary movements. The term vol- 
untary means just this connection with consciousness; it 
has no other meaning. 

Suppose a child sees something white and glittering and 
puts it instinctively into his mouth. It happens to be a 
lump of sugar. Its taste is pleasant. It is retained, dis- 
solved, and swallowed. All the impressions, occurring at 
about the same time, become associated : the sight of the 
thing, the movements of the arm and hand, the taste, the 
movements of the tongue and the lips. The more frequently 
this thing happens, the more firmly established are the as- 
sociations. Later the sight of sugar reproduces at once its 
taste, the visual and kinesthetic images of the movements, 
and the movements themselves — the arm is stretched out, 
the tongue and lips making sucking movements — although 
the sugar may be lying so far away that it cannot be 
touched. The child's consciousness then contains what we 
have previously called will, and what may also be called 
desire: a vivid impression accompanied by pleasantness, 
sensations of restlessness, and an image of a pleasant con- 
clusion of the whole experience. We say then that the 
child wills, desires, to have the sugar. 

We can will to do only that which in its elements we have 
previously done by instinct. If we do not know how a 
movement feels when we perform it, of course we cannot 
bring it about by way of our consciousness, that is, by our 
will. Children have as much command of speech as they 
have acquired by instinctively producing speech sounds in 
response to accidental stimulations. This instinctive pro- 
duction occurs usually rather late in the case of certain 



no EXPRESSIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

sounds, as ky r, sh ; and accordingly, in spite of all special 
efforts on the part of the parents, children learn to produce 
those sounds only at that late time. We presuppose, of 
course, that they are not deaf. For in deaf children the 
speech sounds instinctively produced do not enter into an 
association with the kinesthetic sensations and therefore 
cannot be voluntarily reproduced ; that is, the children re- 
main dumb. Many a grown person remembers that all his 
attempts at learning the pronunciation of a certain sound 
in foreign speech (take for example the gutteral German r, 
or the German ch^ or the French nasal sounds) were in 
vain until by a mere accident, instinctively, he pronounced 
that very sound. After that he had command of it. 

This interweaving of the instinctive reactions of the 
body with conscious life is of the greatest practical signifi- 
cance. However well adapted the inherited reflexes may 
be to the purpose of keeping the young animal alive, they 
are very insufficient in meeting the ever growing complica- 
tions of life. And they are not perfect even in the begin- 
ning. A reflex is the response to a present and direct im- 
pression upon the organism ; but very similar impressions 
may come from things of different properties. Poisonous 
substances often look and taste like articles of food. The 
enemy assumes the attitude of a friend welcoming you. 
Reflex action is powerless to give the organism the protec- 
tion needed in such cases. Instinct is easily deceived. 
But as soon as the harmful consequences impress them- 
selves upon the organism, the instinct is modified, and in 
the future these consequences will be avoided. The in- 
stincts are ready-made institutions intended to be appHed to 
average conditions. Their readiness and completeness is 
in so far of inestimable advantage to the organism. If it 
had to learn everything necessary for life, it could not sur- 



THOUGHT AND MOVEMENT 



III 



vive. But for the manifold deviations of the external world 
from the average no provision can be made in this manner. 

The variation of the organism's response is made pos- 
sible by the existence of higher nerve centers, that is, of 
connecting neurons of a higher order, more remote from 
the sensory and motor points of the body. Let us imagine 
the proverbial reaction of a child to the sight of a flame, 
and discuss the successive stages of development by the 
help of figure 15. (i) The visual stimulation starts a 
nervous process from j^, which passes through the bulb 
and spinal cord into the muscles of the arm at mi. A 
small part of the current may 
branch off at a and, instead 
of passing down towards by 
take the direction of v. But 
the resistance in this direc- 
tion is for the present so high 
that only an insignificant part 
of the process can take this 
way, and so no corresponding 
motor response is noticeable. 

(2) While all this is still 
going on and the child's arm 
is still moving forward, the 
heat of the flame acts as a 
pain stimulus at s^. The 
nervous process produced 
passes over c and d to the muscles at m^y whose contraction 
results in the arm's being pulled back. This results in a 
third stimulation at J3, which we need not trace farther 
here. But not the whole of the nervous process passes from 
c down to d. A part of it, of considerable absolute magni- 
tude because of the intensity of stimulation, passes from c up 




A Burnt Child fears 
THE Fire." 



112 EXPRESSIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

to / and thence over k down to d and finally also into m^. 
This process going from / to k^ according to a general law 
of nervous activity, tends to attract other, weaker nervous 
processes, if the neuron connections make this possible. 
Consequently the nervous process from s-^ to a is now 
turned mostly into the path a-v-p and only an insignificant 
part of it continues to go from a towards b. The conse- 
quence is that the resistance of the path a-v-p-k-d is soon 
reduced to less than the resistance of the path a-b. The 
great significance of this fact becomes clear in the third 
stage of development. 

(3) At some later time the flame again acts as a visual 
stimulus. But now, because of the change of resistance 
just explained, the nervous process takes for the most part 
the path over a-v-p-k-d, and the reaction follows at m^ in- 
stead of at m^ The child has learned to avoid the flame. 
The child, when seeing the flame, is conscious of the pain, 
as imagery, without having to receive the actual stimula- 
tion at s^. 

Thus the inflexible regularity of reaction gives place to 
another type of reaction, an adaptation, not only to those 
conditions which at the time make their impression upon 
the organism, but also to those conditions which are mere 
future possibilities. The experience of the past guides the 
organism into the future. 

QUESTIONS 

117. What is the twofold connection into which instinctive move- 
ment enters with consciousness ? 

118. Why is the movement of a billiard ball often accompanied by 
movements of the players or spectators ? 

119. What is a voluntary movement ? 

120. In what manner is will dependent on instinct? 



THOUGHT AND MOVEMENT II3 

121. Why do deaf children not acquire speech? Can they be 
taught to speak ? 

122. Why is the acquisition of foreign speech sounds by grown 
people often so slow ? 

123. What is the advantage to the organism of voluntary over in- 
stinctive action ? 

124. Can you describe the three stages of nervous development illus- 
trating the proverb " A burnt child fears the fire " ? 



CHAPTER III 

COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

A. THE INTELLECT 

§ 14. Perception 

I. Characteristics of Perception 

At every moment of waking life a multitude of impres- 
sions are received by the mind through the eyes, the ears, 
the cutaneous and all other senses, giving information 
about processes in the external world and in the subject's 
own body. However, because of the peculiar laws of 
mental activity, the actual conscious experience differs 
greatly from a mere sum of all those impressions — from 
what would be the content of consciousness if mind were 
nothing but an accumulation of senses. In order to distin- 
guish the actual consciousness from the abstractly con- 
ceived sum of sensations, we use as a specific term the 
word perception. 

Does not a newspaper look different if held in the right 
way or turned upside down, a landscape if seen in the 
ordinary way or through our legs } In the latter case there 
are in our consciousness a multitude of incomprehensible 
details, lines, figures, colors ; in the former we are conscious 
of one thing, a landscape, with its divisions, each of these 
divisions with its subdivisions, and so on. The one con- 
sciousness is practically the result only of simultaneous 

114 



PERCEPTION 115 

sensory stimulations ; the other consciousness, in addition 
to these stimulations, is determined by the laws of organ- 
ized mind, by attention, memory, practice. 

A percept contains both less and more than the sensa- 
tions corresponding directly to the stimulations. According 
to the conditions discussed under attention, certain sensa- 
tions become focal at the expense of others which become 
marginal. For example, of all things impressing them- 
selves upon my retina, only a few — usually, but not 
always, those in the center of the field of vision — attain 
a high degree of consciousness. And of these things again 
not all the qualities, but only a few become highly con- 
scious. If, as in this case, the visible things happen 
to become highly conscious, the simultaneously existing 
audible or tastable things are apt to remain at a low degree 
of consciousness. That which is important for the needs 
of our daily life is specially favored and becomes a part of 
the percept. That which has no practical importance does 
not easily become a highly conscious part of the present 
mind. The variations in color of a gown forming many 
folds are rarely noticed. All parts of the gown are per- 
ceived as parts of the same substance. That the whole 
gown is made of one kind of cloth is practically important. 
That the various folds appear to the eye — because of the 
variation of the illumination — somewhat different, is of no 
practical consequence. Many quite common phenomena, 
after-images, overtones, difference tones, are never known 
by the majority of people, because of their practical unim- 
portance. 

But a percept contains not only less, but also much more 
than the sensations corresponding to the stimuli of the 
moment. Numerous images are woven into this system 
of sensations and thus give additional meaning to it. We 



Il6 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

may be said to see that the things are hot or cold, rough 
or smooth, heavy or light, although our eyes as mere sense 
organs cannot give us any such information. In the same 
way we may be said to see that the things are at this or 
that distance from our head, and that this thing is nearer, 
that thing farther from us, although our inherited ability 
to see things spatially does not give us any other informa- 
tion than that of shape and size in the field of vision. By 
incessantly repeated experiences we have learned, at an 
early age, that changes in the distance of things which in 
this or that way have come to our knowledge, are regularly 
accompanied by definite changes in their size, their color- 
ing, their appearance when the right eye's image is com- 
pared with the left eye's image, and many similar changes 
of the impression. Whenever such signs of changes in the 
distance are impressed upon our mind, we immediately sup- 
plement them by ideas of the distances themselves. Thus 
our original two-dimensional perception of space is ex- 
panded into a three-dimensional perception. 

All knowledge of things, of their properties, their names, 
their uses, their meanings, consists in supplementing our 
consciousness of those qualities which they present to our 
senses, by images previously obtained through any senses. 
The force of this supplementing can be understood from 
the drawings of children and primitive peoples. That 
which appears in the field of vision is often left unrep- 
resented. Linear perspective, for instance, does not exist 
in such drawings, although it is a part of the sensory im- 
pression. On the other hand, many things are given by the 
draughtsman which are! invisible under the circumstances 
of the situation, but which he regards as essential parts of 
the thing because of their practical importance : for in- 
stance, both eyes of a person seen in profile, equal length 



PERCEPTION 117 

of all the legs of tables and chairs, equal size of things at 
a distance and things near by. 

The significance of this supplementing by ideas is illus- 
trated also in pathological cases. It happens that some of 
the associative connections in the brain are destroyed by 
disease, reducing the mind to a condition like that of early 
childhood, when direct sense impressions alone determined 
action. Patients may see the shape and color of a thing 
correctly, may even be able to draw it or paint it, but are 
unable to tell the name of the object, although they are per- 
fectly familiar with it. They cannot answer our question as 
to what purpose the thing serves ; possibly they give ridicu- 
lous answers, fitting an altogether different thing. Only 
when they are permitted to use the kinesthetic and tactual 
senses by taking the thing in their hands, do they recognize 
it. In other cases the patient, although possessing his normal 
sensibility to touch, is unable to recognize things by his 
hands alone, but recognizes them at once when permitted 
to open his eyes. 

A particularly characteristic feature of our perception is 
the grouping together into a mental unit of elements which 
are not united either spatially by contiguity or nearness, or 
by similarity of their coloring, or their other attributes. 
The grouping of such elements into a unitary mental state 
is often the result of a repeated necessity for reacting upon 
this sum of impressions by a unitary movement. The 
newspaper held upside down does not invite the reaction of 
reading. Parts which are separated by blank spaces or by 
black bars, are separately perceived. But the words and 
sentences are not perceived, because we have not previously 
been obliged to read under such conditions. Looking into 
a furnished room I perceive at once tables, chairs, and 
other pieces of furniture, although the legs of a chair, for 



Il8 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

example, are spatially and by their coloring better con- 
nected with the carpet than with the back of the chair. 
When I am looking at a portrait standing upside down, the 
dark hair and the dark background become a mental unit, 
a percept of a dark area. The light face is another mental 
unit. In upright position the hair separates from the 
background and unites with the face. I then perceive a 
person before a dark background, in spite of the similarity 
of coloring between some parts of the figure and the back- 
ground, in spite of the difference of coloring between some 
parts of the figure and other parts. The grouping of the 
elements in perception is therefore widely different from 
that which would result from the stimuli directly. It is de- 
termined by our habits of reaction upon such groups as 
frequently appear together in the world in which we live. 

Let us illustrate this by two 
figures. Figure i6 may be per- 
ceived as a rabbit's or as a 
duck's head. When we per- 
ceive the figure as a rabbit's 
head, the white streaks to the 
right of the eye are two separate 
FIG. 16.-TW0 POSSIBILITIES seusatlou groups, each of them 
OF Perception. . ° ^ 

unified with respect to the effect 

produced by them in our nervous system. They are then 
the animal's lips. At the same time the protrusions to the 
left make us conscious of softness, warmth, flexibility. 
Now perceive the figure as a duck's head. Immediately 
those white streaks cease to be two separate units for our 
mind. Together with the darker parts surrounding them, 
they affect our mind as a single unit, the variegated back 
part of the duck's head. And at the same time the pro- 
trusions to the left make us conscious of hardness, cold. 




PERCEPTION 119 

rigidity. The sensory stimulations are exactly the same, 
but they are differently grouped together, and they bring 
about further nervous activities which greatly differ in 
these two perceptions. 

Figure 17, when shown to a person, is perceived as the 
result of a child's careless handling of his ink bottle, as an 
ink spot. But ask this person if he does not see a boy 
falling downstairs, and immediately certain elements are 
grouped together and affect us as being the legs, other 
elements of sensation are perceived as the arms, and so on. 
And now suggest to the same person to turn the page 
slightly to the right and see a man trying to put on his 
shirt. Quickly the perception changes again ; but this 
time not so much by the breaking up of the former units 
into their sensory elements and the formation of new units, 
as by a change of the accom- 
panying ideas. The previous 
suggestion tends to make us 
perceive these sensations in 
one or the other way because 
it guides our attention. But 
this guidance is possible only 
because certain groups of 
sensational elements (for ex- 
ample, the groups illustrated 
by our figures) have very 
often occurred in our mind in 

consequence of the fact that ^ ,, 

^ . . Fig. 17. — Varieties OF Perception. 

they originate from external 

objects which have often been presented to our sense organs 
among greatly varying surroundings. Thus we have learned 
to group these elements together and to neglect, more or less, 
all other elements which may be presented simultaneously. 




I20 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

The total process of selective grouping and of furnish- 
ing the groups formed with additional mental contents has 
often been called apperception» But this meaning of the 
term apperception is not universally adopted. Some mean 
by apperception mainly the selective grouping of the ele- 
ments, others mean by it exclusively the furnishing with 
ideational contents. Because of its ambiguity the term 
apperception has been entirely omitted from the present 
book, and the term perception is used in its broadest sense, 
including both the processes just mentioned. Perception 
thus means the working over by the mind of any aggregate 
of sensational elements given at the time through the 
sense organs. 

2. Illusions 

While the laws of perception are, on the whole, of the 
greatest benefit to the organism surrounded by a confus- 
ing multitude of physical elements bound together into a 
large number of more or less stable compounds, of things, 
there are exceptional cases in which these same laws lead 
the mind into a reaction not suitable to the situation pre- 
sented. 

That which has often occurred is likely to recur. But 
it does not regularly recur in the same manner. There 
are exceptions. It happens that certain things occur in 
surroundings different from their usual surroundings. 
These things are then perceived, that is, grouped to- 
gether and supplemented by images, in harmony with their 
usual surroundings. But the perception is then in discord 
with the actual surroundings. To the inhabitant of the 
plains the colors of things appear rather saturated, and the 
outlines sharp, when these things are at a small distance from 
the observer. Walking toward them, he is soon able to lay 



PERCEPTION 121 

hands on them. But when the air happens to be unusu- 
ally moist, and because of its diminished weight, free from 
the particles of dust which have settled because of their 
weight, things look unusually near, and on walking toward 
them he discovers that it takes more time to reach them 
than he expected. The same happens when he goes to 
the mountains for his vacation, because there the air is 
always comparatively free from dust. We have here a 
foreseeing of what ordinarily becomes the subsequent ex- 
perience, but fails to become it in this instance. 

There is another kind of illusion based on the fact that 
sensations which have been imagined just before the stim- 
uli became effective, are thereby favored and become un- 
usually vivid. This law of attention holds good also when 
the stimuli are not in exact correspondence with the pre- 
ceding images. In such a case the perception is more 
or less assimilated to those images, so that the same 
stimuli result in somewhat different percepts according 
to circumstances. " How heavy it is ! " said a friend 
of Davy's, when the discoverer of potassium placed 
a little piece of this metal on his finger. Potassium is so 
light that it floats on water, but the metallic appearance 
produced the image of pressure and changed the sensation 
into a percept of something heavy. When two pieces of 
gray paper, equally bright but of slightly different coloring, 
are put before me side by side, and I ask myself : is not the 
yellowish paper lighter than the bluish paper, immediately 
it seems to be lighter. But I begin to doubt and ask my- 
self: is not the yellowish paper darker than the other; 
and immediately it looks darker. 

Let no one say that this is only " imaginary," meaning 
by this word that there are in my mind both the objectively 
true impression and an incorrect image of something 



122 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

similar. Such is not the case. There is no duality of 
consciousness. There is one unitary experience. Only 
scientific reflection reveals the fact that this unitary ex- 
perience has two sources, one in the external stimulation, 
the other in the central nervous excitation. The result of 
these sources, the percept, does not betray the doubleness 
of its origin any more than a stream at its mouth shows 
the doubleness of its sources. It is a universal property 
of perception to be determined not by sensory stimulation 
alone, although this is the primary factor, but also by 
images, by nervous dispositions. The more vivid such 
images, the greater is their influence — now and then their 
deceptive influence — on our consciousness of the objec- 
tively existing. Suggestion is a name which has recently 
been accepted for such an influence. Illusion is another 
name for it, in case it is rather pronounced and ill adapted 
to the object. 

QUESTIONS 

125. What kinds of mental states are called perceptions? 

126. Illustrate the change of a percept into a mental state not worthy 
of the name, caused by a change of the situation which involves neither 
a subtraction nor an addition of stimuli. 

127. What impressions become a part of the percept, and what im- 
pressions do not? 

128. Show that a percept contains not only less, but also more than 
the sensations corresponding to the stimuli of the moment. 

129. What can we learn about perception from the drawings of 
children ? 

130. Illustrate the perception of a thing whose parts appear spatially 
separate. (None of the illustrations in the text strictly answers this 
question.) 

131. What changes occur when a rabbit's head is perceived as a 
duck's head? 

132. Are illusions signs of mental abnormality? What are they? 

133. What two classes of illusions are distinguished in the text? 



IDEATION 123 

§ 15. Ideation 

The same laws which govern the supplementing of im- 
pressions by images, govern also the supplementing of 
images by other images. We refer to the appearance of 
images supplementing other images by the word remem- 
berings or ideation. 

What we remember is always deficient in details com- 
pared with what we perceive. Remember a landscape, a 
street scene, a well-known person. Innumerable details 
are always lacking in the idea, although they were present 
in the corresponding percept. These details which are 
lacking may be either parts separable from the object, or 
mere attributes of sensation inseparable from the sen- 
sation. On the other hand, ideas are richer than per- 
cepts. They contain elements obtained from other simi- 
lar perceptions and added by association, as when the idea 
of a landscape is enriched by a tower, the idea of a per- 
son by a beard, which actually are not present at these 
places. 

Ideas are also strongly influenced and altered by other 
ideas which happen to be in consciousness at the same 
time (" set of the mind ") ; for instance by questions, par- 
ticularly by questions in the negative form — " did you 
not," ** was this not," — by the wish to make a good impres- 
sion upon others, and by similar factors. We may have 
no intention of exaggerating, in Falstaff *s fashion, the sig- 
nificance of our deeds ; nevertheless our memories become 
gradually modified so that the uncommon, the important, 
the valuable in them is emphasized, and the common, the 
insignificant, the unpleasant is obliterated. Wherever our 
memories are fragmentary and indefinite, they offer but 
slight resistance to questions attacking this point, for in- 



124 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

Stance : Do you believe that the gentleman was as tall as 
you are ? 

Memories are thus, not exceptionally, but universally 
inaccurate representations of that which has been per- 
ceived. This has recently been proved by direct experi- 
mental tests. Since percepts, although they rest on a 
foundation of external stimulation, are so strongly influ- 
enced by the mind's own manner of functioning, the ex- 
istence of this influence in the case of imagery, lacking 
such a foundation, is not surprising. Although memories 
are but rarely totally misleading, mankind has long ago 
learned to rely upon memory in all important business and 
legal transactions only when there is agreement between 
the memories of several witnesses. The changeableness 
of memory is particularly strong in the child's mind. The 
perceptual experiences have not been so often repeated as 
in the adult mind, and the practical importance of accuracy 
of remembering has not made itself so much felt. For 
both reasons the child's memory is very unreliable. 

The word imagination is frequently used to signify a 
specially strong ability to modify memories by associated 
images. Thus we speak of the imagination of the child — 
but also of the artist and the scientist. Without imagina- 
tion the scientist would not succeed in his task of making 
the phenomena of nature more comprehensible by showing 
the consequences of the remotest relations between things. 
It is clear, however, that imagination is not a fundamental 
" faculty " of the mind, separable from other " faculties," 
but a result of the fundamental laws governing mental 
functions. 

Let us turn to the fragmentary nature of reproduced 
experience and discuss its significance. That previous ex- 
perience can be reproduced only in fragments is the direct 



IDEATION 125 

result of the selective power of attention, which asserts 
itself in both perception and ideation. Not every quality 
of a thing presented is equally interesting. A child having 
a watch takes interest mainly in the ticking and in the 
glitter of the golden case. Meeting a dog, he gives atten- 
tion to the terrifying bark and the multipHcity of legs. 
Suppose now that the dog regularly occurred together 
with a special impression, perhaps a spoken word; then 
the recurring of this symbol will tend to reproduce in the 
child's mind the image of the dog. But the pressure of 
many competing tendencies does not permit the reproduc- 
tion of all the qualities of the dog which have become 
conscious on former meetings with this animal. Only an 
extract, so to speak, of these qualities is reproduced, and 
this is made up of those which were formerly especially 
interesting, — the bark and the legs. 

Another factor determining the selection of special 
qualities of a thing for reproduction is the frequency with 
which each quality reappears in things which are different 
in certain respects, but in other respects belong to the 
same class. The trees of a forest beside which I am 
walking have many individual differences. But certain 
features are common to all the trees. These common 
features reappear again and again, while each of the 
other features appears only now and then. The same can 
be said of various dogs met on the street, of various tones 
of a violin, and so on. If the perception of the trees is 
experienced together with a certain other percept which 
may serve as a symbol for the trees, for example the word 
trecy the association of the symbol with those regularly 
repeated qualities becomes firmly established, whereas the 
association with the other, more or less varying qualities, 
remains comparatively feeble. The result is that the symbol 



126 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

tends to reproduce almost exclusively the former qualities. 
These come to make up a separate group of images, a gen- 
eral idea. 

The laws of attention, practice, and memory, together 
with the simple uniformity of nature just mentioned, pro- 
duce thus a peculiar result. They remove ideation from 
the accidents of external events in an incomparably higher 
degree than perception. They bring about ideas of the 
separate qualities of the things perceived, abstractions, and 
ideas of common features, general ideas. In many cases 
an idea is both an abstraction and a general idea. Ex- 
amples of such ideas to which no equally simple concrete 
object corresponds, are the idea of a mere length, the color 
red, sight, a dog in general, a tree in general. 

These ideas are of eminent importance for all higher 
mental development. Mind, in them, departs from that 
which nature presents, but only in order to take possession 
of it more securely by systematization and by overcoming 
the narrow limits of the capacity of consciousness. 

By separating the common qualities of things from those 
which vary we^ classify the things into kinds and species, 
we think of them as being in various ways related. Instead 
of having an incomprehensible mass of things standing side 
by side, we have a system of coordinated and subordinated 
things, of groups formed according to closer or remoter 
relationship; and thus it becomes a comparatively easy 
matter to survey the multitude of things of which nature 
consists. Not only order, but law too is thus brought into 
the phenomena of nature. If we collect sticks of wood and 
set fire to the pile, we notice that some of them burn lustily, 
others smolder and smoke, still others do not burn at all. 
Why so } Repetition of similar experiences is necessary 
before we can give an answer; but mere repetition of the 



IDEATION 127 

same event does not enable us to give the answer. The 
event must be broken up and general ideas must be formed 
out of the elements of the event. Then only can we 
answer the question. Some of the sticks burn because 
they are dry. Others do not burn so well or do not burn 
at all because they are wet. Neither shape nor color nor 
origin nor many other qualities of the sticks have any causal 
connection with the difference of burning and not burning. 
Both order and law in nature are recognized by abstraction. 
Equally important is the overcoming of the narrowness 
of consciousness by abstraction and generalization. When 
I am thinking of trees, the contents of my mind are very 
few. There may be a word image, a visual image of 
something tall and branching ; hardly more. All the 
special features of trees of all kinds are absent from con- 
sciousness. So I can easily think of additional things, for 
instance of the age which trees may reach, or the eleva- 
tion at which trees cease to grow. But the moment I begin 
by accident to think of a thing which does not harmonize 
with those features of the tree which thus far have been 
absent from consciousness, immediately those features 
become conscious and inhibit the contradictory thoughts. 
They have been unconscious and yet we cannot say that 
they have been sheer nothing. The consciousness of the 
general idea has in some way prepared the path for the 
special features from which it has been abstracted. They 
have been carried close to the door of consciousness, so 
to speak, and the slightest impulse coming from an associ- 
ated idea will cause them to enter. This is our meaning 
when we say that within the general idea of which we are 
conscious all those special features are included. They are 
included by representation, the general idea being the 
deputy taking care of their interests. Thus our mind is 



128 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

freed from the necessity of carrying at any moment a heavy 
load of actual states of consciousness and is nevertheless 
able to act as reasonably as if those mental states were 
present. In using representative ideas, our mind has 
actually at its service the enormous number of all those 
individual ideas which are represented by them. 

QUESTIONS 

134. Enumerate in what different respects ideation is (more or less) 
similar to perception. 

135. Why are reproduced experiences fragmentary?, 

136. How does a general idea originate? 

137. What is the difference between abstractions and general 
ideas? 

138. Can an idea be both an abstraction and a general idea? 

139. Illustrate the formation of a natural law by means of abstraction 
and generalization. 

140. With what feature of political life may the service of a general 
idea in mental life be compared? 



§ 16. Language 
I. Word Imagery 

There can be no doubt that animals are to some extent 
able to generalize. A dog or a cat is trained to distinguish 
between indoors and outdoors and to adjust its behavior 
accordingly. This would be impossible if the dog possessed 
no general notion of room or street. 

But these generalizations remain rather insignificant so 
long as they are not connected with one definite image 
which stands as a symbol for the whole class of things. 
Nature scarcely presents to us any images which could be 
used as symbols of this kind. What are we invariably 



LANGUAGE 1 29 

conscious of when thinking of books, or of trees, or of 
houses — something that is not only invariable, but also 
readily separable in our imagination ? It is difficult to name 
anything which fulfills these conditions. But man created 
what he did not find in nature, symbols which can be used 
as meaning whole classes of objects and relations of objects. 
The totality of these symbols is human language. 

These symbols are normally divided into four classes of 
imagery, four languages, so to speak, in such a manner 
that each class of objects has a symbol in each of the four 
languages. The first of these languages acquired by the 
child is the auditory language, made up of the sounds of 
the words spoken by others. Soon after having begun to 
understand spoken words, the child begins to speak him- 
self. Thus he acquires a second language, made up of kin- 
esthetic imagery of his vocal organs. These languages are 
the only ones possessed by illiterates. In school the child 
learns to read, that is, he acquires a third class of symbols, 
consisting of visual images of written and printed words. 
One might of course speak of these as two visual languages, 
since the sight of written words differs somewhat from the 
sight of printed words. Finally the child learns to write, 
and thus acquires a fourth language, made up of kines- 
thetic images of the writing hand. 

These are, of course, not the only languages possible. 
The blind-born, unable to acquire visual imagery, substitute 
tactual word imagery by learning to read raised letters or 
the raised point script generally taught in institutions for 
the blind. But a seeing person, too, may acquire this tactual 
language in addition to the other four. The deaf-born ac- 
quire a visual language made up of the images of the hand 
and the fingers representing symboHcally letters and words. 
But it is hardly worth while to enumerate all these minor 



I30 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

languages. The most important ones practically are these 
four: the auditory, the visual (written and printed), the 
kinesthetic of the vocal organs, and the kinesthetic of the 
writing hand. 

We saw that the origin of all these languages, that is, 
classes of word images, is to be found in speech. How 
speech itself originated in the human race is a problem 
which thus far is not solved, or at least, of which no pro- 
posed solution has thus far been universally accepted. 
Some light is shed upon it by the answer to the simpler 
question as to the origin of speech in childhood. Only 
during the last few decades has this question been given 
attention, obviously because this growth of speech, as an 
everyday occurrence, seemed to ask for no explanation. 
The child imitates! — what else should be said about it.? 
But in order to imitate, the child must first be able to pro- 
duce the elements of the things to be imitated. And by 
imitation speech only is acquired, but not the full signifi- 
cance of language. 

2. The Acquisition of Speech 

(i) Speech originates from instinctive activities of the 
vocal organs. As a child, when left to himself and feeling 
well, plays with his hands and kicks, he also, in response 
to all kinds of external and internal stimulations, moves 
instinctively (that is, because of his inherited nervous 
connections) lips and tongue, larynx and chest, and pro- 
duces a great number of different sounds and sound com- 
binations — not only those which are used in the language 
of his people, but also the strangest crowing and smacking 
and clucking sounds. He cannot produce speech sounds 
without immediately hearing them. Thus an association is 



LANGUAGE 131 

formed between sound perception, kinesthetic perception, 
and motor activity ; and soon the sound of his own voice 
stimulates the child to further production of these speech 
sounds. This explains why the same sounds are often so 
many times repeated in an infant's babble, and why baby 
talk contains so many reduplications like papa, mama, 
byby, and so on. 

(2) The sounds invented by the child are used by the 
parents and other people in their communications with the 
child. They select from the large number those which are 
like speech sounds of their own language. They address 
the child with these words again and again, forming also 
brief sentences, and thus stimulate the child to produce at 
will the words which he has at his command, in these com- 
binations and sentences. The child thus becomes more 
and more skillful in the production of these words. Mean- 
while the numerous other baby words which have no sig- 
nificance for the people surrounding him, are gradually lost 
from the child's mind, so that later they can no longer be 
produced voluntarily. Practically every child can, on the 
basis of his articulating instinct, learn any language spoken 
anywhere on earth. But in later years, when this instinct 
has weakened and has been replaced by the habit of pro- 
ducing the sounds of a particular language, it is a difficult 
matter to learn to speak a new language. The sound per- 
ception as well as the sound production is then assimilated 
to the " native" speech, and the words of the foreign lan- 
guage are consequently spoken in a manner similar to the 
words of the native language. This is meant when we say 
that foreign languages acquired in adult life are, as a rule, 
spoken with an "accent." 

The activity of grown people influences the child's 
talking in yet another way. The child hears those words 



132 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

which are selected by the people surrounding him, usually 
in the presence of the persons and things and events for 
which the words serve as symbols. Thus new associations 
are formed. To the kinesthetic and auditory word images 
is added imagery of the word's meaning. The child 
comes to experience the words as symbols and to repro- 
duce ideas of the words when the things appear as 
percepts or images. Only then can we say that the 
child has really learned to speak, to express his per- 
ceptions, his images, and his feeling and willing in 
speech. 

(3) When the child has reached this stage when he be- 
gins to comprehend the practical importance of this ac- 
tivity of his vocal organs, he begins to imitate voluntarily, 
eagerly, the speech of grown people. This imitation is to 
some extent mechanical, without involving any compre- 
hension of the meaning of the words. The child simply 
enjoys being able to produce the same words which grown 
people use. This imitation is in many cases at first very 
imperfect, because many elementary sounds necessary for 
these words have not been produced instinctively thus far 
and therefore cannot be produced voluntarily, the kines- 
thetic imagery being lacking. But soon even the more 
difficult sounds are produced accurately. The vocal organs 
acquire the habit of assuming certain normal positions, 
from which the special activity of speech in each case of 
pronunciation proceeds. In a few years the total number 
of words necessary for a command of the language is 
acquired. But voluntary imitation is not restricted to mere 
pronunciation. It is applied also to the modes of uniting 
words into compounds, phrases, sentences. The result of 
this application is the creation of new compounds out of 
the words which the child has at his command at the time, 



LANGUAGE 1 33 

of new methods of applying inflection, to the amusement 
of those who surround him. The following are a few ex- 
amples of such creations : goed for went^ chair for sitting, 
more pencil for / want the other pencil^ mussing down as 
the antonym of mussing up> 

Voluntary imitation, therefore, does not altogether mean 
assimilation to the language which the child hears spoken ; 
to some extent it means departure from that language, re- 
sulting from the mental capacities with which he has been 
endowed by nature. In another way too the child's lan- 
guage must differ from that of grown people. All acquisi- 
tion of speech is based on perception and is subject to the 
laws of perception. We have previously seen that percep- 
tion is largely dependent on the interest of the person who 
perceives, on his previous experiences. 

A child's interests are totally different from those of a 
grown person, so that many words cannot assume in the 
child's mind the meaning which they possess in the adult's 
mind. At a later stage this difficulty can to some extent 
be overcome by the aid of language itself, by explaining in 
words the meaning of a new word. At the beginning this 
is of course impossible. So a large number of words used 
by adults remain for a long time entirely meaningless to 
the child, especially abstract words, relative words {to-day, 
here, I), and words meaning things with which the child 
does not come in contact. Even those which he seems to 
understand perfectly have a different meaning. A watch 
is to the child something which ticks and sparkles. The 
adult's meaning of the word can in no manner be conveyed 
to the child. The name of a particular article of food may 
be used for all things which are edible, also for eating, for 
hunger, and so on. A certain baby called his father, 
mother, nurse, sister, all by the same name, dada, then 



134 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

applied this word also to his bottle, and finally to every 
interesting object. 

This does not mean that children generalize more than 
adults, that they have a superior logical capacity. The 
meaning of the child's words is often more general than 
that of adults because the child takes interest in fewer 
qualities, and naturally finds these in a greater number of 
objects. But the difference is not that of a greater power 
of generalization. Very often the child's words have a 
more special meaning. A child is not likely to use the 
word animal as meaning worms, birds, and horses. The 
difference Hes in the fact that the child uses the word as 
a symbol for a thing or quality which is conspicuous to 
him^ interesting to him* A child's language is amusing to 
grown people only because they do not know the meaning 
which the words have in the child's mind, and are inclined 
to substitute the meaning which they have in their own 
minds. 

(4) In spite of all imitation, the individual's language 
is largely his own creation adapted to his individual 
needs. To the extent to which the children of a commu- 
nity, of a nation, have similar interests and similar experi- 
ences, these individual creations must be similar. But to 
the extent to which interests and experiences differ, language 
must differ. Baby talk which is quite comprehensible to 
the members of one family is incomprehensible to those of 
another family. Similarly, the language of one tribe of the 
human race has come to differ from that of another tribe, 
one nation's language from that of another nation. Family 
differences, of course, cannot last long. The child's lan- 
guage assimilates itself to the language of the people at 
large as soon as the child comes under the influence of peo- 
ple outside of the family. This is the fourth stage in the de- 



LANGUAGE 1 35 

velopment of an individuars language, lasting much longer 
than the three preceding stages, indeed practically never 
ending. From mistakes in comprehending others, from 
mistakes of others caused by his own language, or from 
special instruction in school, the individual learns how the 
words which he uses are to be understood in order to agree 
with the general usage of language, and thus approaches 
more and more the ideal of uniformity of speech. 

This uniformity, however, can never become complete. 
The number of words of which various individuals have 
command always differs. Their meanings always differ 
slightly, sometimes considerably. Accordingly the phrases 
and sentences which one uses differ from those of others. 
Every one has his own linguistic style. For most practical 
purposes the actual uniformity of language is sufficient. 
Not a few misunderstandings, discussions, quarrels, how- 
ever, have their source in the insufficiency of this uniform- 
ity. This is regrettable, but unavoidable. The nature 
of mind creates language such as it is, and mind has to 
make the best of it. It is only on a very high level of 
mental development that men succeed in creating for defi- 
nite purposes definite languages which admit of almost no 
differences of meaning ; for instance, the symbolic systems 
of mathematics and chemistry. But these systems prove 
that the very perfection carries with it an imperfection. 
The specific power, the art and beauty of language, are not 
to be sought in mathematical and chemical treatises. They 
depend on the speaker's and hearer's individuality. 

3. The Growth of Language 

Just as one individual's language differs from that of 
another individual, the language of one time differs from 
the same nation's language at another time. The words of 



136 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

a language change or are replaced by new ones. The in- 
flections change, are probably simplified, or as in the case 
of the English language, almost completely lost The 
manner of forming compounds, phrases, and sentences is 
altered. The meaning of the words is no more fixed; 
many words change their original meaning entirely, even 
to the opposite. Changes of the former kind — changes of 
the sounds, their inflections, and their combinations — are 
brought about partly by external and fortuitous conditions, 
such as the Danish invasion of England or the Norman 
conquest, also by greater ease of pronunciation. But here 
the laws governing mental life are also determining factors, 
and in the changes of meaning every growth depends on 
these laws. The same forces which build up the child's 
language in conformity with his experiences, thoughts, in- 
terests, and needs, bring about also the gradual changes of a 
nation's language in conformity with the changing experi- 
ences, thoughts, and needs. 

Under special circumstances one among all the properties 
or features of a person or thing may occupy the mind al- 
most exclusively, as of Julius Caesar the despotic power 
which he obtained, of Captain Boycott the ban which was 
placed upon him. In such cases, when the name is heard 
and pronounced, the special feature impresses itself upon 
the mind. The speaker thinks of little else than this. And 
when the necessity arises of expressing in a word that pe- 
culiarity in another place under different surroundings, the 
individual name offers itself, since its original meaning has 
already been modified, since it has already lost most of its 
individual significance. The part of its meaning which is 
retained is now generally applied. An expansion of the 
special meaning has taken place. 

On the other hand, words which were originally applied 



LANGUAGE 1 37 

to many things in many different situations come to signify 
a particular thing under particular circumstances. This 
change of meaning is illustrated by the names which the 
state or nation gives its officers. President, secretary, 
general, captain, had originally a very broad meaning, but 
when applied to the officers of the state have a very special 
meaning. It is easy to explain this. The word captain^ 
meaning originally merely the chief of any aggregation of 
people, is naturally applied by the speaker most frequently 
to the chief of that company of men in which he is particu- 
larly interested. The chief of another company of men is 
then no longer called by this simple name, but additional 
names are used. The word when used without additional 
words comes to mean exclusively the chief of the special 
group which is of main interest to the speaker. Similarly, 
city assumes for the person living in the country the mean- 
ing of the city near by. Gas means for the man who is 
not a physicist only the ordinary illuminating gas. 

Other changes of meaning resulting from associative 
connection and a transference of attention are the metaphors 
and metonymies. A metaphor is a figure of speech in 
which one object is spoken of as if it were another ; for ex- 
ample, when St. Luke says, " Go ye, and tell that fox," 
meaning Herod. A metonymy is the exchange of names 
between things related. Toilet meant originally a small 
cloth, a napkin, spread over a table. Then it came to mean 
the table itself, used in the process of dressing. Then it 
meant the process of dressing one's hair, later the general 
process of dressing one's self. It also assumed the mean- 
ing of a person's actual dress, his costume ; also the style of 
dress. More recently it has come to mean the toilet room, 
the lavatory. 

Many changes in the meaning of words result from 



138 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

certain secondary purposes of the speaker. We usually 
address another person in order to obtain something from 
him. In order to succeed, we must keep or make him 
good humored, give him his proper honors and titles, flatter 
him rather than call attention to his faults. The con- 
sequence of this exaggeration of the person's value is that 
all titles, all forms of appellation, especially those addressed 
to the female sex, tend to deteriorate, to lose their original 
value. Lady no longer means the wife of a nobleman, but 
is applied to a washerwoman. Sir is used in a letter 
addressed to any man, however low his rank. 

Deterioration of the meaning of words is not restricted 
to those used for appellation. Whenever we desire to 
convey any thought to others, we must make it appear 
important enough to have people give attention to it. We 
therefore choose terms which mean more than we intend 
to say, rather than terms which mean exactly as much or 
less. We call things lovely or horrid when we mean only 
agreeable or disagreeable, we speak of heaven or hell when 
we mean only a good or a bad place. The inevitable re- 
sult is, of course, that the impressive words become insipid. 
We call a student fair who is only mediocre, merely because 
of our good will towards him. Fair then comes to mean 
mediocre, and we call a student fair who is a poor student. 
Finally, a fair student comes to mean a poor student. 

Those who are particularly anxious to use impressive 
language — young people, students, soldiers — often use 
the other extreme for the same purpose. They use words 
which signify low or bad things and relations (slang) in 
order to refer to the things and relations of ordinary life 
to which they want to call attention. " Grub " comes to 
mean human food. ** Being plucked '* takes the place of 
" being rejected at an honor examination." Puritan diXidi 



LANGUAGE 1 39 

quaker are slang terms of the seventeenth century which 
have entirely lost their original meaning of contempt and 
ridicule. In the same way words of low meaning are all 
the time being raised into the realm of good language. 

Speech depends as much on the totality of mental life as 
perception. A person's choice of words, their forms and 
their connections, are determined by previous habits of 
using words, by experience concerning those qualities of 
things which are most important to his own interests, by 
his consciousness of his present needs and ends. The 
general purpose of communication between the members 
of society tends to obliterate differences between individuals 
and between generations. But it never does this perfectly. 
Individuality, circumstances, and special purpose give to 
the language of each person an individual stamp ; and the 
succession of individuals, of historical conditions, of the 
varying needs of successive generations, brings about un- 
avoidably alterations in the language. These alterations 
are retarded by the existence of a written language, of 
literature. They may also be retarded artificially by train- 
ing and compelling the members of a community to use 
the same words and the same rules of grammar and syntax. 
Such artificial remedies, however, are not without serious 
disadvantages. They take the life out of language. Force, 
beauty, and particularly truthfulness in representation of 
thoughts are likely to be sacrificed unless we are willing to 
admit a certain amount of lawlessness, which, after all, is 
the outcome of the fundamental laws of the mind. 

4. The Significance of Language 

Aside from its social significance as the almost exclusive 
means of communication among the members of society, 
language has its significance for purely individual mental 



140 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

activity and mental growth. This has already been re- 
ferred to above. Language makes possible an almost un- 
limited refinement of abstract thought, a complete analysis 
of the data of perceptual, ideational, and affective life into 
their elements, and the construction out of them of new con- 
cepts, first according to their similarities, then according 
to purposes. Such concepts as acceleration, pitch of tone, 
irrational number, atomic heat, justice, bliss, would be 
impossible without language. To the invention of such 
abstract concepts mankind owes its subjugation of nature. 
It is difficult to think of the exact manner in which bodies 
fall when they are dropped ; some fall slowly, others with 
great velocity, some do not fall at all, but rise. But think 
of them as being in space from which the air has been ex- 
hausted, and apply the concept of acceleration. At once 
the matter is very simple, and it includes even the heavenly 
bodies with which we never come in direct contact: all 
bodies fall with constant acceleration. 

This is but one of innumerable instances. Practically all 
laws of physics, chemistry, philology, psychology, and all 
the other sciences are stated in terms of highly abstract 
concepts. Imagine, for example, the sine or tangent of 
an angle, electromotor force, molecular weight, consonants 
and vowels, intensity of sensation. None of these abstract 
concepts and none of the laws in which they appear could 
have been invented without the aid of language. How 
restricted, further, would be our knowledge without lan- 
guage ! How limited the exchange of opinions I Think 
of such a phrase as " the events of the last thirty years." 
What a multitude of ideas is suggested by it in the most 
economical manner ! Few of these ideas actually become 
conscious; but all of them are made ready to serve if 
their services should be needed. 



LANGUAGE I41 

Language further enables us to overcome, whenever 
this is necessary, the ambiguity of its own elements (the 
words) which results from the individual and historical 
conditions influencing the growth of speech. The mean- 
ing of words can be fixed by definition. Such words as 
circhy energy^ freedom, have many different meanings (a 
circle of friends, the energy of style, the freedom of a city). 
The physicist defines energy as the capacity for perform- 
ing mechanical work, excluding any and all other mean- 
ings. The philosopher defines freedom as the possession 
of the power to act in accordance with one's inherent 
nature, independent of external causes. Because of the 
association between the defined and the defining words, 
the latter keep the defined word from being used wrongly, 
by entering consciousness when the defined word happens 
to be used in an improper connection. It is true that, in 
order to insure constancy of meaning, the defining words, 
too, should be defined again by others, and so on. A 
perfect definition is therefore an ideal which can be 
approached, but never reached. In spite of this, the 
value to human thought and knowledge of clearly defined 
concepts is immeasurable. 

QUESTIONS 

141. Why does generalization play such an insignificant part in the 
mental life of animals ? 

142. What are the four languages of educated normal people ? 

143. Which of these languages is acquired first by the child ? 

144. How does baby talk originate ? 

145. How are the reduplications of baby talk to be explained ?. 

146. What is the origin of " a foreign accent " in speech ? 

147. Why does voluntary imitation of speech sounds by a baby de- 
velop at first very slowly ? 

148. Illustrate the inventiveness of children in learning to speak. 



142 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

149. What could make one think that children surpass grown people 
in the ability to generalize ? 

1 50. What are the four stages in the development of an individual's 
language ? 

151. What is the advantage or disadvantage of uniformity and indi- 
viduality in the use of language ? 

152. Illustrate how a word of individual meaning changes to a gen- 
eral meaning. 

153. Illustrate how a word of general meaning changes to an indi- 
vidual meaning. 

1 54. Explain the psychological origin of a metaphor and a meton- 
ymy. 

155. Illustrate and explain the deterioration of words. 

156. Illustrate slang and explain its origin. 

157. Is it desirable that the written language should retard the 
growth of the spoken language ? Give reasons for your answer. 

158. What significance has language besides serving as a means of 
communication ? 

159. What is a definition ? Why can a definition never become 
perfect ? 

§ 17. Judgment and Reason 
I. Coherent Thought 

When I receive a letter from a friend, I perceive its 
words, I become conscious of their meaning, I remember 
my relations to him* ; for instance, the time of our first meet- 
ing. But my thought proceeds. I wonder how he is 
getting along now, whether better or worse than myself, 
whether he has succeeded in overcoming through his 
greater energy the obstacles which retarded my progress. 
This is more than perception, imagination, or abstract con- 
sciousness. It is a coherent process of thinking. The best 
way of describing its characteristics is to tell what the op- 
posite of coherent thought is. 

First, coherent thought is not dreaming. The elements 
of a dream are of course united by something. But they 



JUDGMENT AND REASON 143 

are united only like the links of a chain. If the second 
link were removed, nothing would hold the first and the 
third together. This chain-like thought is frequent in the 
insane. The following is an example from Diefendorf's 
Psychiatry : — 

" My mother came for me in January. She had on a black bomba- 
zine of Aunt Jane's. One shoestring of her own and got another from 
neighbor Jenkins. She lives in a little white house kitty corner of our'n. 
Come up with an old green umbrella 'cause it rained. You know it 
can rain in January when there is a thaw. Snow wasn't more than 
half an inch deep, hog-killing time, they butchered eight that winter, 
made their own sausages, cured hams, and tried out their lard. They 
had a smoke house. [Question: But how about your leaving Hart- 
ford ?] She got up to Hartford on the half-past eleven train and it was 
raining like all get out. Dr. Butler was having dinner, codfish, twasn't 
Friday, he ain't no Catholic, just sat with his back to the door and 
talked and laughed and talked." 

In other cases, mere similarity of words of different mean- 
ing, rhyme, familiar questions, or spatial contiguity of things 
lead consciousness from one idea to a second, from the 
second to the third, and so on, without any common tie 
which would unite all these ideas into one system. 

Coherent thought, secondly, is no endless recurring of 
the same few ideas, as when I am brooding over some- 
thing, when a song which I have heard occupies my mind 
and gives me no peace, when the thought of having pos- 
sibly failed to lock the door properly prevents me from 
sleeping. This recurring kind of thought, too, is a fre- 
quent symptom in cases of mental derangement; for ex- 
ample, as a continuously present desire to kill somebody, 
or as the permanent idea of one's own sinfulness and 
worthlessness. 

Coherent thought is intermediate between the two ex- 
tremes just mentioned. It is a train of thought regulated 



144 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

by the associative connections between all the separate 
ideas and one central idea which dominates and unifies 
the whole. The thought of a football game or of the 
destiny of the United States branches out into innumer- 
able partial thoughts, each one leading to another one. 
But they are all united by their relation to this game or to 
this nation. Such a coherent thought need not possess a 
considerable length. Sometimes, as in unconstrained con- 
versation or in letter writing, it may soon be followed by 
another coherent thought, this by a third, and so on, and 
these may be related to each other merely like the links 
of a chain. Sometimes, however, it lasts for hours, as in 
lecturing on a definite subject, or in writing or reading a 
chapter of a book or a whole book. 

Coherent thought depends largely on memory, on asso- 
ciative connections. But it depends also on those con- 
ditions which determine attention: unless the thoughts 
have an affective value, unless they are interesting to the 
individual in question, they are not likely to enter con- 
sciousness. Because of this dependence on the conditions 
of attention, certain persons are capable of coherent thought 
in some lines, but not in others. Whenever the purely 
associative function predominates over the conditions of 
attention, or conversely, those abnormalities occur of which 
we have just spoken, mere chain- like thought, or obsession 
by a single idea. 

Nothing else favors coherent thought so much as the pos- 
session of language. The simplicity of a word or phrase 
and its connection with experiences of unlimited complexity 
enable the mind to keep within one system of thought in 
spite of temporary deviations, numerous and winding 
though they be. Such complicated ideas, inexhaustible 
to him who tries to describe them, as propriety, honor, 



JUDGMENT AND REASON 145 

duty, may guide and determine a long-continued train of 
thoughts and actions. The most important one of all these 
guiding ideas, crystallizing around a single word, is the 
idea of self, of /. 

2. The Self and the World 

Among the impressions received by a child through his 
sense organs, some must very early distinguish themselves 
from the rest, (i) When the child is carried about or 
creeps about, the majority of his impressions change from 
moment to moment : instead of a wall with pictures, seen 
a few seconds ago, he sees windows with curtains ; instead 
of tables and chairs he sees houses, trees, and strange 
people. Certain impressions, however, hardly change. 
Whatever else he may see, he almost invariably sees also 
his hands and some of the lower parts of his body. What- 
ever may be the position of his body, sensations from his 
clothing, from the movements of his limbs, from the pro- 
cesses in his digestive and other organs are always present. 
(2) Another impressive phenomenon is this. The things 
seen often move, and thus cause alterations in the field of 
vision. But when these moving things are his own arms 
and legs, yielding to the pull of their muscles, there is an 
additional experience, made up of kinesthetic and usually 
also tactual sensations. Certain experiences are therefore 
a kind of twofold experience as compared with others 
which are of one kind only: visual plus kinesthetic- 
tactual. (3) In still a third way certain experiences dis- 
tinguish themselves. Whenever the child's hands and feet 
come in contact with external things, a tactual sensation 
is added to the visual impression. But when one hand 
touches the other hand or a foot or another part of the 
body, even a part which is not seen, a peculiar double 



146 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

tactual impression is received. That this double tactual 
sensation is particularly interesting may be concluded from 
the concentration with which an infant plays with his feet, 
and the enjoyment which a kitten seems to get from biting 
its tail. 

For various reasons, therefore, the sensations of a child's 
own body, visual, tactual, organic, etc., become experiences 
of a special class. By various peculiarities they distinguish 
themselves from all others and become a special, unitary 
group. But the child's ideas and feelings, when compared 
with his perceptions, also form a peculiar system, often 
keeping unchanged while the perceptions change because 
of movements of the objective things or of the body itself. 
It is quite natural, then, that in opposition to the external 
world a dual system is conceived, made up of the bodily 
sensations on the one hand and the ideas and feelings of 
frequently repeated or especially impressive experiences 
on the other. But in spite of this unison between the 
complex of bodily sensations and the complex of ideas, 
forming a personal world as opposed to the external world, 
there remains an opposition between the constituents of 
the personal world as between a material and a spiritual 
half of the whole. 

This complex idea of a personal world, of personality, 
which constantly increases in content, is given a special 
name, John or Mary, and still later another name, /. The 
unity of the idea of personality, the readiness of its ap- 
pearance in consciousness in spite of the multitude of its 
contents, is greatly enhanced by this name. The idea / be- 
comes the omnipresent and dominating factor in conscious- 
ness. I can see nothing, hear nothing, imagine nothing 
without, however vaguely, thinking that it is / who reads, 
/ who answers, / who designs. It is altogether impossible 



JUDGMENT AND REASON 1 47 

to express such thoughts in language without reference 
to the / or the mine. In the ecstasy of the mystic or the 
mental exaltation of the insane, the idea of /may be absent, 
but never under normal conditions at an age beyond that 
of infancy. Consciousness in which the idea of /is rather 
pronounced is commonly called self-consciousness. 

It is plain enough that thinking of the other half of the 
world, other than the self, is also facilitated by such names 
as " the world," ** the external world." But the concept of 
the external world does not easily attain the unity of the 
concept of self, because the experiences referred to are too 
changeable in comparison with those referred to by /. We 
speak of the external world chiefly in order to distinguish 
it from the self, not because of the unity of its conception. 

The extraordinary support which the consciousness of 
self receives from language has had also a certain unde- 
sirable consequence. We have mentioned in an earlier 
chapter the universal desire to imagine the world as being 
under the power of innumerable demons. The conscious- 
ness of the self thus leads naturally to the thought of a 
demon who inhabits the human body. When a person 
under ordinary conditions is conscious of the /, there is no 
time for its content to unfold itself to any considerable ex- 
tent. Usually one small group of ideas enters consciousness, 
even when I ask myself the question as to what I am : 
ideas of a certain visual appearance, a certain position in 
society, a certain age, certain aims in life. It seems tiien 
that the concept of self is exceedingly simple. This ap- 
parent simplicity gives aid to the idea of the existence 
of a simple demon, independent of time, eternal, inhabit- 
ing and governing this body as long as its organs are held 
together by their normal physiological functions, after 
the body's death going elsewhere — whither, we do not 



148 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

know. But this conclusion as to the existence of a simple, 
unitary subjective reality is no more justifiable than the 
statement that, because of the simplicity of the idea it in 
ordinary language, there must be an absolutely simple 
objective reality which corresponds to it. 

Mind may justly be called a unity. But it is not a simple, 
indescribable unity, a unitary something separable from 
the sum of the parts of which it consists. It is, rather, a 
unity comparable to the unity of an animal organism or a 
plant, which may be well described as consisting of so many 
different parts functioning together according to definite 
laws. Within the unity of the mind there are smaller groups 
which may also be called unities, though in a restricted 
sense. The / is one of these subordinate unities. It, too, 
is not simple, but consists of parts, sometimes a greater, 
sometimes a smaller number. It may expand and include 
almost as much content as mind itself, provided that time 
is given for such an expansion, and a sufficient stimulus. 
Usually the / is very poor in content, hardly anything else 
than the word-idea which is the representative of the whole 
concept. 

3. Intelligence 

It is but natural that thought is largely in harmony with 
the actual facts. Its contents are derived from sensory 
experiences, are molded by sensory experiences, and must 
therefore often be anticipations of sensory experiences. 
With reference to its agreement or disagreement with the 
actual facts, we give our thought the name of truth, knowl- 
edge — or error. Both truths and errors, like perceptions 
and illusions, are the results of the laws governing mental 
functions. But truths are more common in the mental 
life of certain individuals than in that of others. Youth is 



JUDGMENT AND REASON 149 

more apt than mature age to give free rein to its imagina- 
tion, no matter whether it agrees with reality or not. This 
is partly the result of the mature man's realizing the high 
value of this agreement and therefore striving for it ; partly 
the unintended consequence of innumerable pleasant and 
sad experiences, of adaptations which have proved now 
more, now less successful. But aside from such differ- 
ences developing during life, there are immense differences 
of a similar kind resulting from native capacities. We 
speak of such capacities as reason, judgment, intelligence. 

Intelligence does not consist merely in a good memory, 
making possible the exact reproduction of experiences of 
long ago. A good memory in this sense contributes much 
toward a high degree of intelligence, but is not identical 
with it. Even the feeble-minded are often found to possess 
an astonishing capacity for retaining dates, poetry, music. 
But memory adapts the thought processes only to very 
simple and frequently recurring events. When the circum- 
stances become complicated, it soon proves inadequate. 

Imagine a servant sent on an errand. He finds it im- 
possible to execute the instructions received from his 
master. That ends it, if he is deficient in intelligence. 
No instructions have been given for this case ; thus there 
is nothing to do but to return home. But the thought of 
an intelligent servant is more comprehensive. He recalls 
his master's situation and analogous cases; the probable 
purpose of the master's order ; other possibilities of realiz- 
ing the same end. Thus he succeeds perhaps in recon- 
structing the totality of the conditions which led his master 
to send him, and in meeting these conditions. 

Take another example. Of several physicians, all but 
one are mistaken in the diagnosis of a case. Why do they 
differ ? Every disease is characterized by a multitude of 



150 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

symptoms. Some of them are obvious, so that no one can 
fail to notice them : the complaints of the patient. Others 
are more hidden, but no less important. The physician 
must search for them. Each symptom, for example, fever, 
lack of appetite, dizziness, megalomania, may appear in 
very different diseases. A definite group of symptoms in 
definite degrees of intensity is characteristic of a particular 
disease. Two conditions, therefore, must be fulfilled to 
make a correct diagnosis. The symptoms which are hidden 
must be called up by those which are obvious, so that the 
physician can search for them and determine whether they 
are present or absent ; for without first thinking of them 
he cannot search for them. Secondly, the thought of the 
present and absent symptoms must reproduce the idea of 
the disease which is characterized by the presence or 
absence of just these symptoms. This reproduction is 
possible only in a mind in which all these ideas are very 
closely connected, forming a well-organized system. Where 
this is not the case, the less obvious symptoms cannot in- 
fluence the decision, and the correctness of the diagnosis 
becomes a matter of chance. 

Lack of intelligence, then, means a deficiency in the 
organization of ideas^ a. lack of those manifold intercon- 
nections by which a large number of ideas may enter into 
a unitary group — no matter how effectively each idea is 
associated with a small number of others, that is, how 
excellent the person's memory. Intelligence means organi- 
zation of ideas, manifold interconnection of all those ideas 
which ought to enter into a unitary group, because of the 
natural relations of the objective facts represented by 
them. The discovery of a physical law in a multitude of 
phenomena apparently unrelated, the interpretation of an 
historical event of which only a few details are directly 



JUDGMENT AND REASON 151 

known, are examples of intelligent thought which takes 
into consideration innumerable experiences neglected by the 
less intelligent mind. Neither memory alone nor attention 
alone is the foundation of intelligence, but a union of mem- 
ory and attention. Energy of concentration must be com- 
bined with breadth of interest. It is clear that thought 
determined by both these conditions is more likely to 
agree with the enormously complicated events in the ex- 
ternal world than thought which is governed mainly by 
one of them. 

How does human intelligence differ from that of ani- 
mals ? That man is immeasurably superior to animals can- 
not be doubted. But human superiority does not consist in 
the possession of a higher faculty — let us call it reason — in 
no way dependent on the lower, animal faculties, to which 
it is added as a jeweler's tools might be added to a black- 
smith's tools. The difference between the animal mind and 
the human mind is simply this : that the imaginative antici- 
pation of possible experiences of the future is brought about 
in the human mind by means of more abstract and there- 
fore more comprehensive ideas than in the animal mind. 
Man's mind is by natural inheritance far more capable 
of forming abstract ideas than is the mind of the high- 
est animals. Man is further immensely aided in abstract 
thought by language — his own invention — which fur- 
nishes him with symbols taking the place of the most com- 
plicated ideas, and because of their simplicity, effecting 
economy in mental work as tools and machines do in man- 
ual labor. Animals, too, possess symbols, cries; but their ^ 
number is insignificant. The difference between man and ^^ 
animals is therefore only one of degree in properties which 
are common to both. But these degrees are indeed very 
far apart in the scale. 



152 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 



QUESTIONS 

1 60. How does coherent thought differ from dreaming? 

161. How does coherent thought diifer from mere recurrent thought? 

162. What are the conditions on which coherent thought depends? 

163. What is the significance of language for coherent thought? 

164. What are the two sources of the idea of self ? 

165. What influence has language on the concept of the unity and 
indivisibility of self ? 

166. What is the true concept of the unity of mind? 

167. How does intelligence differ from memory? 

168. How does the text describe " lack of intelligence"? 

169. How does human intelligence differ from that of animals? 



§ 18. Belief 

It seems, then, that all our knowledge is a mere adapta- 
tion to external circumstances, that truth is entirely rela- 
tive, being only a fitting relation between the subject and 
his surroundings. But are there no truths whose evidence 
is inherent in them ? Are there no axioms which are im- 
mediately evident ? Is it not our task to derive all other 
truths from these axioms by means of logical rules the cor- 
rectness of which we are obliged to admit ? Or, if there are 
also secondary truths, which we recognize as such only be- 
cause they suit our experience, are not those immediately 
evident truths a superior kind, preeminently worthy of the 
name ? For example, the logical, mathematical, and reli- 
gious truths ? 

Our previous discussion of truth and knowledge is in- 
deed insufficient. We called truth any mental state which 
is in harmony with objective reality, no matter whether this 
relation of harmony is itself thought of in the truth or not. 
But we may use the word trutky or knowledge^ in a sub- 
jective sense, meaning by it a complex mental state which 



BELIEF 153 

includes the thought of its agreeing with objective reality ; 
that is, a state which includes the belief oi its objective 
counterpart. Most people take it for granted that knowl- 
edge is mental activity which has its objective counterpart. 
However, there are very many subjective truths to which 
an objective reality cannot correspond. Christian, Jewish, 
pagan, and philosophical martyrs have testified with their 
blood to their faiths, which in certain respects contradict 
each other. They must, therefore, have sacrificed their 
lives partly for something objectively untrue. On the other 
hand, there are objective truths which are not believed; 
for instance, theories which are rejected for some time, but 
later prove to be right. 

We have seen how objectively correct thought originates. 
Let us now consider the origin of thought which includes 
the thought of the existence of its objective counterpart; 
that is, the origin of belief. 

An infant has no consciousness of either reality or un- 
reality. He has simply conscious states, without any such 
distinction. But he cannot fail to learn the distinction. 
He is hungry. He cries. He becomes conscious of re- 
produced former experiences of food and of the mother 
bringing the food. And, indeed, the door opens, the 
mother enters with the food, very similar to the imagined 
mother, and yet differing in vividness, in permanence, in 
number of details. At a later time the child imagines 
strange compositions : animals with legs both below and 
on their backs, so that they can turn over and continue 
running when one set of legs is tired ; princes and 
princesses with golden crowns on their heads ; fairies 
carrying marvelous gifts in their hands. But nothing of 
this kind appears with the vividness, permanence, and 
distinctness characteristic of the mother entering the door. 



154 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

Human beings who appear with a similar vividness, per- 
manence, and distinctness, either are bareheaded or wear 
plain-looking hats ; and their gifts amount to but little. 
When the child imagines the experience with his mother, 
he recalls the substitution of the vivid and stable conscious- 
ness for the feeble and fleeting image of the mother and 
the food. When he imagines his dreams of princes and 
fairies, he recalls the substitution of those vivid but homely 
mental states for less vivid but more beautiful ones. When 
such experiences have been repeated hundreds of times, 
the child begins to reaUze that there is a distinction of the 
greatest importance between the two classes. He forms 
the abstract concepts of sensory perception and of fancy 
— of consciousness of various sensory qualities and' char- 
acterized by indescribable vividness, permanence, and 
distinctness; and on the other hand, of consciousness of 
various sensory qualities and characterized by feebleness, 
fleetingness, and vagueness, and in this respect flatly 
contradicted by the mental states of the other kind. In 
these abstract conceptions consists the consciousness of reality 
and unreality. Reality and unreality are not logical op- 
posites, but merely relative concepts. 

As soon as the ideas of reality and unreality are once 
formed, ample opportunity is found for their application. 
They are applied also to cases which do not belong to 
either of the extremes of vividness, permanence, and 
distinctness, or feebleness, fleetingness, and vagueness. 
Finally, they are applied by mere analogy to cases which 
do not directly call for their application — as in a discussion 
of historical truths. At this point another distinction is 
made. Trees with leaves of silver are never presented to 
our sense organs. But the elements which make up even 
the most contradictory compounds of fancy have been 



BELIEF 155 

known through the sense organs and become known again 
as sensory impressions. Trees with a foliage of silver are 
not seen in everyday life ; but trees are seen, and leaf-like 
things of silver, too. Even if all our ideational thought 
were fancy, its elements would tend to make us conscious 
of the concept of reality rather than of unreality because 
separately the elements have often been experienced with 
a high degree of vividness, permanence, and distinctness. 
The opportunities for thinking of reality are incomparably 
more numerous in human life than those for thinking of 
unreality. We develop the habit of conceiving our thoughts 
as real, unless there is a positive force compelling us to 
accept the opposite concept. Thus we understand why 
the child, as soon as he has formed these two concepts, is 
immensely credulous. 

Tell the child that the moon is going to drop from 
heaven, and he will look up, expecting to see it fall. The 
child's experience is limited. There is but rarely a posi- 
tive force tending to reproduce in his consciousness the 
concept of unreality. Where there is no such force, the 
child does not remain neutral, skeptical, but conceives his 
thought as including objective reality. Language assists 
in this tendency, for the first words acquired by the child 
mean objective realities, persons, clothes, furniture, and 
so on. The frequent use of these words strengthens the 
habit of thinking of things as realities. Of much influence 
is also the use of the verb to be as a mere copula and also 
in the sense of to exist. The child is thus induced to 
regard a thing as existing because it is thought to be 
yellow, round, etc. That to be is used in this ambiguous 
manner in all languages seems to be additional proof of 
what is historically certain, that the human race, like the 
human child, has passed through a period of extreme 



156 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

credulity. This racial credulity through the traditional 
usage of language contributes now to the credulity of the 
individual. 

Gradually the child's experience becomes more exten- 
sive and begins to exert upon the multitude of original 
beliefs an influence which sometimes continues all through 
life, although ultimately the progress becomes very slow. 
Experience steadily encroaches upon the realm of belief, 
driving it from ground which it previously occupied. It 
also gives additional authority to belief, enabling it to hold 
more firmly that to which previously it possessed but a 
doubtful title. 

Much that contradicts frequent experiences is taken out 
of the realm of belief and called a fairy tale or a story. 
Trees with golden apples ? There is no such thing, the 
real apples assert — we are all mellow and meaty, not hard 
as gold. A Santa Claus who distributes gifts to all the 
children everywhere at the same time ? Impossible, says 
everyday experience. He who is here cannot also be 
yonder and in a thousand other places. 

On the other hand, experience gives strength to the 
child's belief. Single matters of belief are connected 
mutually and with the absolute basis of all knowledge, the 
sensory perceptions of the present. When I am obHged 
to think, however briefly and vaguely, that as really 
as I now see this paper and perceive the words printed 
on it, I was at that particular time, previous to those and 
those events of the meantime, at a certain place witnessing 
a certain act, my belief in the reality of this event is un- 
shakable. Whatever can be connected in this manner 
with this fixed point, is itself fixed, placed beyond doubt. 

Why can I believe my dreams while I am dreaming 
them, but not after waking up } Because consciousness is 



BELIEF 157 

limited during sleep. There are no perceptions with their 
normal vividness, permanence, and distinctness, with which 
the dream may be compared as to its reality. There are 
\i\x\.few other ideas accompanied by a vivid idea of reality, 
with which the dream may be compared. The dream has 
therefore the maximum of reality of all mental states pres- 
ent at that time in the mind. This is meant when we be- 
lieve our dreams while we dream them. In a dream it 
may seem real to be shot toward the moon in an immense 
shell in company with other people, as in Jules Verne's 
story. But in waking life this thought is altogether devoid 
of reality. In comparison with the reality of my present 
experience and of my ideas of the limits of engineering, of 
the low temperature of interstellar space, and so on, that 
thought of a journey in a shell immediately makes me 
conscious of the vivid idea of unreality. I cannot believe 
that story. 

We call a verbal statement proved as soon as the connec- 
tion between it and our present experience has been estab- 
lished in such a manner that the idea of reality is aroused 
in our mind. The believing of that which has been proved 
is called knowing. Belief is often used in a narrower 
sense, excluding that which is known and including only 
that which does not arouse either an idea of reality or 
an idea of unreality. Both usages are justifiable, the 
narrower one and also the wider one. Knowledge and 
belief are opposed as well as related. It is of much 
practical importance to distinguish that which has been 
proved from that which has not been proved. But it is 
also of practical importance to distinguish that which is 
surely unreal from that which is merely unproved. It 
is quite impossible in human life to prove every statement 
before we permit it to affect our thought and our action. 



158 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

The chief thing which a man must have learned when 
he arrives at maturity is this : that the number of facts 
to be believed is very much smaller than he thought 
originally. The belief of childhood and youth is subject 
to continuous losses. Something is, indeed, confirmed and 
strengthened by growing experience ; but it was believed 
before it was known, and cannot properly be called an 
additional belief. Much that has been believed for some 
time is recognized as unreal. That apparent errors have 
to be recognized as truths happens much more rarely. 
Experience makes a man more and more skeptical, cau- 
tious. This is of great advantage to him in his adaptation 
to the world, and higher institutions of learning to a large 
extent have their purpose in aiding the young to develop 
cautious, critical habits of thinking. A student goes to 
college not merely in order to cram himself with bare 
facts, but to be trained in the habit of seeing men and 
things in the abundance of their relations, of asking for 
their passports before granting them free passage. 

Thus the original tendency to believe is gradually 
limited, more in one individual, less in another. But it is 
never perfectly eradicated. This, indeed, would not be 
advantageous. A limited tendency to believe is indispen- 
sable. Two conditions contribute chiefly toward the re- 
tention of a belief which can be neither proved nor 
disproved : authority and personal needs. 

" He told us so " is reported to have been a common re- 
mark among the disciples of Pythagoras. And to the pres- 
ent time disciples of any master have not failed to quote 
their master. It is not even necessary to be a master in 
order to be a prophet. A strong voice, significant gesticu- 
lation, and impressive speech are sufficient to guide the 
belief of the masses of the people. When everybody holds 



BELIEF 



159 



a certain belief and gives expression to it, no member 
of the crowd can escape the influence of the constant 
repetition of the thought. I cannot help believing what 
my friends or my associates in a profession believe. Even 
if I begin to reflect on the reasonableness of accepting as 
a truth what I have merely often heard, I can hardly free 
myself of the belief. Is it not highly improbable that all 
of them should have been led into error without noticing 
it ? On the consensus of everybody, philosophers have 
frequently founded their highest doctrines. Cicero calls 
it the voice of nature. On the other hand, narrow-minded 
people often attempt to fight a truth which they dislike by 
pointing out partial disagreements among its adherents. 

But the belief in statements which are neither proved 
nor disproved is not always based on authority ; that is, 
produced by emphatic and often-repeated expression of 
these statements by the people among whom we live. It 
is frequently the result of strong and deep-seated needs of 
the human mind. As long as these needs make them- 
selves felt, they call up in the mind ideas of remedies and 
means in harmony with analogous experiences ; and unless 
these remedies and means are contradicted by other ex- 
periences, they are believed. One may call this, in dis- 
tinction from the authoritative belief, practical or emotional 
belief. 

Every one believes in his own destiny. Every mother 
believes in her son. Napoleon believed in his star. A 
general who doubts if he is going to win the impending 
battle has already half lost it. Can he prove it, that is, 
can he interpret what he sees and what is reported to him 
in such a manner that the idea of his winning the battle 
cannot appear in his mind without the idea of reality.? 
He is probably very far from giving his experiences 



l60 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

such an interpretation. Of course, he will do his best 
in order to make victory come his way. But his knowledge 
constantly informs him that the outcome is dubious. Yet 
this knowledge does not keep him from believing that it is 
not dubious. .^He cannot help believing it. His whole 
existence depends on this belief. His honor, his future 
career, his nation, all is lost unless he wins. The idea of 
loss is impossible. It is inhibited by the idea of success, 
by that idea which alone can give him the prudence and 
presence of mind that are needed. 

Or the mother who beHeves that her son will turn out a 
respectable man, does she do it because of her experiences } 
Her experiences are perhaps opposed to her belief; she 
believes, nevertheless. Circumstances were unfavorable to 
her son, his father does not understand his real nature, he 
merely enjoys his youth : thus she comforts herself. Ex- 
perience is not the foundation of her belief, but her belief 
interprets her experience. The belief is founded on the 
fact that she needs it. The idea of a wayward son would 
deprive her of the most valued part of her existence. 
Therefore she cannot believe it. 

Misfortune of any kind has a marvelous belief-creating 
power, because it constantly revives ideas of remedying 
the misfortune. "Whoever has lived among people," 
says Spinoza, " knows how full of wisdom they feel, in- 
sulted if any one should offer any advice, as long as their 
affairs are prosperous. But let misfortune overpower 
them, and they are willing to ask any one's advice, and to 
accept it, however senseless and ill-considered it may be." 

Experiential, authoritative, and practical belief differ 
according to their sources, but they appear in life in vari- 
ous combinations. However, one of three kinds can 
usually be found to be the chief component in a system of 



BELIEF l6l 

conviction. That we cannot escape the authoritative be- 
lief is plain. Who could repeat every observation made 
by others in order to avoid the possibility of accepting 
erroneous reports ? Practical belief has different limits 
according to the amount of experience possessed by each 
individual. And a whole class of people having about the 
same kind and amount of experience may thus be distin- 
guished from another class by their practical beliefs. A 
practical belief of one, which is not shared by another, is 
called by the latter a superstition. How much supersti- 
tions differ and how much they change is well known. 
Recall, for example, a superstitious means of improving 
one's looks, of curing diseases, of regaining a lost love. 
But wherever a superstition is difficult to contradict be- 
cause it is so stated as to concern only that which is be- 
yond experience (spiritualism), or when it is supported by 
a famous name, it may successfully resist all attempts at 
overthrowing it. 

We saw that practical belief is not altogether independ- 
ent of experiential belief. Neither is the latter independ- 
ent of the former. When two theories agree equally well 
with experiential facts, we accept the one that is simpler. 
Not because we know that it is nature's obligation to pro- 
ceed in the simplest manner possible, and that therefore 
the simpler theory is more likely to be correct; but because 
our practical needs compel us to accept a simpler theory 
whenever we can. We believe the Copernican theory of 
the solar system and reject the Ptolemaic system. Not 
because one is more correct than the other ; but because 
the Copernican system combines the same objective fitness 
with an immeasurably greater simplicity. The simple we 
desire ; the simple, therefore, we believe. A simple con- 
nection of a variety of things is pleasant, beautiful. It 



l62 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

is easy to survey it. It takes but a small amount 
of mental energy to imagine it. Whenever our experi- 
ences leave us a choice, we choose what is simpler. 
In other cases, too, practical belief comes to the aid of ex- 
periential belief. In the border regions of knowledge and 
within the blank spaces found within the field of knowl- 
edge, belief must take the place of knowledge. 

QUESTIONS 

170. What is the difference between objectively correct thought and 
belief? 

171. What is the wider and what the narrower meaning of ''be- 
lief"? 

172. How do the ideas of reality and of unreality originate in the 
child? 

173. Why are we more inclined to apply the concept of reality than 
that of unreality ? 

174. What is the double influence of experience on the child's be- 
lief? 

175. Should authoritative belief be eradicated? Give reasons for 
your answer. 

176. Should practical belief be eradicated? Give reasons for your 
answer. 

177. What is a superstition ? 

178. Why do we believe the Copernican theory and reject the Ptole- 
maic theory? 

B. AFFECTION AND CONDUCT 

§ 19. Complications of Feeling 

I. Feeling Dependent on Form and Content 

Perception and ideation rarely, if ever, occur in the iso- 
lation in which they were shown above in order to make 
clear their structure : they are accompanied by, interwoven 



COMPLICATIONS OF FEELING 163 

with, feelings. A summer landscape not only looks different 
from the same landscape when covered with snow, but also 
arouses different feelings. I may look forward to the same 
event — an ocean voyage or an automobile tour — as a dan- 
ger or as a pleasure ; I may regard an assertion as a truth 
or as doubtful. The ideas of which I am conscious surely 
differ much in the alternative cases. But still greater is 
the difference of feeling to which we refer by such terms 
as fear^ low spirits^ disquietude^ comforty joy. The exact 
make-up of these complexes of feeling is difficult to describe, 
but we may try to point out the conditions on which they 
depend. We shall first consider form and content. 

Sensations, images, perceptions, and so on, give rise to 
feelings, not only on account of what they are, but also and 
indeed chiefly because of their manner of connection, of 
succession, and of spatial relation. Colors which we regard 
as most beautiful separately may compose a carpet whose 
color scheme we dislike and call inharmonious ; on the 
other hand, the most uninteresting gray dots may com- 
pose a beautiful design. A piece of music is beautiful not 
alone because of the clearness of the single tones, but 
chiefly because of the relations of these tones in melody, 
harmony, and rhythm. 

One principle is generally applicable to this class of feel- 
ings : a variety of mental contents is bound together into 
a unity for our perception and imagination. A multitude 
of unconnected things is not easily perceivable or thinkable ; 
therefore it is unpleasant. A single thing, so simple that 
it cannot be analyzed into component parts, cannot occupy 
our mind for any length of time ; it is tedious, unpleasant. 
A combination of variety and unity is able to keep us men- 
tally busy without overburdening the mind ; therefore it is 
pleasant. 



l64 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

The general principle, however, admits of a great many 
different applications. The unity may consist, for example, 
in the similarity and regularity of arrangement of the pickets 
of a fence. The unity may consist in subordination of a 
number of equal elements to a dominating element, as the 
larger fence post taking the place of a picket at regular in- 
tervals, or the accented element in a rhythm. The unity 
may consist in organic unity of the elements of a living 
thing. It may be logical unity, as in a sentence or a lecture. 
Several of these and other kinds of unity may appear 
simultaneously in the same matter ; and one of these unities 
may be subordinate to another, this again to another, and 
so on, as in a Gothic cathedral, a symphony, or a drama. 

Thus the variety and complication of the feelings based 
on the principle in question is immensely great, depending 
on all these unities, their harmonious relation or opposi- 
tion, and the contents of impression or imagination directly. 
This complication is further increased by the conditions dis- 
cussed below. 



2. Feeling Dependent on Association of Ideas 

Why does a sunny spring landscape give us pleasure } 
What is its advantage over a gloomy winter landscape } 
Possibly green is a pleasanter color than brown or gray, 
which predominate in the winter landscape. Possibly 
the curved outlines of the trees in their foliage are more 
beautiful than the naked branches appearing like a sys- 
tem of dark veins on a gray sky. But these are hardly 
the main causes of the difference in feeling, which are 
found rather in the different ideas associated with the 
one and the other percept. The spring landscape reminds 
one of life, warmth, travel, picnics ; the winter scene sug- 



COMPLICATIONS OF FEELING 165 

gests death and decay, cold, moisture, overheated and ill- 
ventilated rooms. The feelings aroused by these things 
when we actually experience them are likely to be aroused 
now when these thoughts, however fleetingly, are repro- 
duced. For the same reason the cold sensation of touch- 
ing a corpse is accompanied by a feeling differing from 
that of touching a piece of ice. It is a different thing 
to see a stream of blood or of cherry juice, and in a 
lesser degree even of cherry juice or milk. In every 
case a multitude of memories influence our feelings, or 
lead us directly into a train of thought of pleasant or 
unpleasant character. Thus the feelings which have 
their first origin in a simple percept may become ex- 
ceedingly complicated. 

An especially important consideration is that these feel- 
ings increase in intensity and finally become more con- 
spicuous than the memories by which they are aroused. 
A house in which I experienced an unpleasant scene 
finally arouses unpleasantness directly, without any medi- 
ation by the consciousness of that event. This kind of 
transference of feeling is particularly noticeable when the 
same feeling is aroused by many different memories, 
quite unconnected among themselves, though attached to 
the same percept. No better illustration of this law can 
be found than the feelings accompanying the thought of 
money. From early childhood all through life man learns 
that it is money and again money on which the realiza- 
tion of his desires depends. A definite memory of any 
of these special experiences soon becomes impossible 
because of the competition among them. But the pleas- 
antness originally aroused by them is not lost. It attaches 
itself directly to money. In a similar manner our love for 
our parents, our friends, our home, and so on, originates. 



l66 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

A reverent child may reject as a brutal theory the 
statement that he loves his parents because of the in- 
numerable benefits received from them, that this love is 
but a kind of precipitation of all the pleasures derived from 
the actions of his parents and from his living with them. 
This rejection is in so far justified as the child's love is not 
a conscious deduction from the memory of benefits received. 
Nevertheless, it is quite certain that his love is in some way 
naturally derived from them. Children who are brought 
up by foster parents, if they are as well taken care of as 
by real parents, love them equally well. 

We have pointed out that the idea of / is almost 
omnipresent in our thought, and that it constantly influ- 
ences our feelings. To understand this influence better, 
we may distinguish two relations between / and the rest 
of our thought, according as this or the / is the predomi- 
nant part of our consciousness. The former case may 
be illustrated by our perceiving the movements, gestures, 
and voice-sounds of a person or of an animal as the 
expressions of conscious motives. Even into the percepts 
of inorganic things the idea of / is carried in a similar 
manner. We speak of a bridge boldly swinging across the 
river, a mountain rising proudly to the clouds, a beam 
resting heavily on columns, lines crowding together or 
leaning against each other, tones hiding before and seek- 
ing each other. We attribute contents of the / to the 
things which we perceive; we give them mental life, 
feeling, and conduct, and experience in consequence 
further responses of our own life of feeling. In such 
cases, the influence of the / on our thought is obvious, 
but it does not predominate. On the other hand, the idea 
of / may be predominant, but may receive its special 
coloring from the data presented: as when I feel the 



COMPLICATIONS OF FEELING 1 67 

tragic fate of a hero, not merely through the sympathy 
or admiration which it arouses in me, but as my own 
pain ; when in the stress and striving of a Faust I feel 
my own dreams and desires ; when the precipice pulls me 
down or the towering rock uplifts me. 

Since the idea of / is so influential" for our life of feel- 
ing, it is to be expected that the opposite idea, the idea of 
the external world, is also of considerable importance in 
this respect. Very often we refer to a thing by merely 
emphasizing that it is opposed to, different from, or in- 
dependent of the self. We frequently speak of the world 
and its ways^ of the course of the world, meaning all 
its sense and nonsense, its kindness and cruelty. Natu- 
rally, this idea of the world also gives rise to many compli- 
cated feelings. 

3. Irradiation of Feeling 

We mentioned above that feeling is easily transferred 
from one percept or idea — its substratum — to another one 
which is associated with the first. A special form of 
this law of feeling may be called irradiation of feeling. A 
disagreeable message received early in the morning may 
spoil the whole day ; the news of a great success may for 
some time give to every other experience a joyful aspect. 
Not that the unpleasant or pleasant event is constantly re- 
called. It is recalled now and then ; and the feeling may be 
more intense at these moments. But the feeling does not 
depend on this recall. It attaches itself to any other 
substratum, even to one which is scarcely in any way 
related to the first. I have been vexed by an employee*s 
failure to carry out an order in the proper way and by 
the resulting consequences. Now I am provoked to 



1 68 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

anger by everything that happens, by a harmless ques- 
tion of a child, by the visit of a friend who is ordinarily 
welcome, by the happy looks of a neighbor, by the fly on 
the wall, not least by myself, being so stupid and so 
deficient in self-control that I give room to all this un- 
pleasantness. 

So many-sided are the complications of our life of 
feeling. The contents, their mutual relations, their con- 
nections in the past, the prevailing impressions of the 
present, all these are conditions on which our feeling 
depends. 

QUESTIONS 

179. Illustrate the independence of form feeling and content feel- 
ing. 

180. Explain the pleasantness of unity in variety. 

181. Give examples of unity in variety. 

182. Illustrate feeling based on association of ideas. 

183. What examples are given in the text of transference of fuel- 
ing ? 

184. What are the two relations between the /and the rest of our 
thought, important for our feeling ? 

185. What is irradiation of feeling ? 

§ 20, Emotions 

Our preceding discussion shows that an exhaustive de- 
scription of all our complicated feelings is an enormous 
task. We cannot enter upon it here. But certain classes 
of feelings may be described in more detail ; namely, 
emotions and moods. 

Those feelings which are based on associated ideas,, 
and which rise at once to great intensity, are called emo- 
tions. This definition is somewhat deficient in so far 
as it is difficult to draw the line which exactly separates 



EMOTIONS 169 

great from small intensity and a quick from a slow rise of 
intensity. Nevertheless, the stormy character of certain 
feelings not directly attached to sensory stimulation is so 
conspicuous that a special name is desirable. Anger, 
fright, distress, and hilarity are such feelings : hilarity dis- 
tinctly pleasant, fright and distress equally unpleasant; 
anger also unpleasant, yet mixed sometimes with a cer- 
tain amount of pleasure. The feeling and the conscious- 
ness of its cause are usually so intense in an emotion that 
there is little room for coherent thought. The judgment 
of a person in a state of emotion is narrow ; his actions 
may be called shortsighted. 

Those feelings which become separated from their 
original perceptual or ideational substratum and attach 
themselves to any other kind of perception or ideation — 
no matter what feelings properly belong to these — are 
called moods. They are usually, probably because of the 
separation mentioned, of small intensity. But their dura- 
tion is often very extended. As typical examples may be 
mentioned grudge, worry, dejection, and cheerfulness. 

Like all feelings, emotions and moods are in some way 
related to motor activity. Of particular interest here are 
not the purposive movements, which are by no means ab- 
sent, but a large number of muscular activities seemingly 
of little or no usefulness, resulting from inherited nervous 
connections. In so far as these muscular activities be- 
come outwardly noticeable they are called the expressions 
of the emotions or moods. The angry man instinctively 
clinches his fist, the hilarious fellow dances about. Laugh- 
ing, weeping, wrinkling of the forehead, and blushing are 
further expressions of this class. Contraction of the 
muscle fibers in the skin causes goose flesh, or the hair to 
stand on end. Breathing undergoes changes, becoming 



170 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

quicker or slower than normal. The blood vessels expand 
or diminish in size through the activity of the muscle 
fibers in their walls, causing the subject to look red or 
pale, to feel warm or cold, and in the latter case to shiver. 
Secretion of saliva, perspiration, and secretion of the lach- 
rymal glands may result from the changes in the circula- 
tion of the blood. Fatigue, nausea, lack of appetite, and 
other symptoms of internal processes may occur. 

These phenomena were almost entirely neglected by the 
older psychology, although their significance was under- 
stood by physicians. More recently their psychological 
import has been recognized and even overestimated. It 
has been said that these phenomena not only occur in emo- 
tions, but are the emotions ; that the emotions consist in 
the organic sensations resulting from these reflex muscular 
activities (theory of James and Lange). We do not weep 
because we are sorry, but we are sorry because we weep. 
We do not tremble because we fear a pistol held up before 
us, but we are frightened because we tremble. Two argu- 
ments favor this view. Let all bodily symptoms be gone, 
and the strongest emotion is gone too. Anger without 
clinching the hand is no anger. While I am sitting calmly 
on a chair, smiling, I cannot be angry. And further, when 
the bodily symptoms are exactly imitated or produced by 
drugs or by nervous disease, the emotion is there. Alcohol 
makes a person hilarious and courageous without any per- 
ception of the kind which usually produces this effect. 
Certain poisons or mania cause rage very much like that 
produced by an insult. 

However, these facts do not prove that an emotion con- 
tains nothing else than organic sensations. It is obvious 
that, according to the laws of association, the contents of an 
emotion must be reproduced by those organic sensations 



EMOTIONS 171 

which were present innumerable times when that emotion 
was present. The organic sensations resulting from poisons 
or mania perhaps call up an idea of an insult, and the com- 
plete emotion of anger naturally follows. Because of 
the firmly estabhshed associations, it is also to be expected 
that the voluntary substitution of a different set of organic 
sensations interferes with a present emotion. Introspec- 
tion makes it clear that an emotion contains much more 
than a mere group of organic sensations. 

The instinctive motor activities characteristic of the 
various emotions may be classified under two headings : 
excitation and depression. The difference is especially 
noticeable in unpleasant emotions : anger is an emotion of 
excitement; fear, as a rule, of depression. But this dis- 
tinction is not entirely absent in pleasant emotions. The 
joy of a grateful memory is characterized, not indeed by 
depression, but by a restfulness very distinct from the 
excited joy of expectation or the delight at a present ex- 
perience, although the pleasantness felt may be of exactly 
the same degree of intensity. A careful analysis of these 
motor activities must distinguish, not only excitement and 
depression, but also their occurrence in either the skeletal 
or the involuntary muscles, the muscles of the vascular 
system. Thus one may distinguish four classes of emo- 
tions, as characterized chiefly by heightened activity of the 
skeletal or of the vascular muscles, or by weakened activ- 
ity of the skeletal or of the vascular muscles. Symptoms 
resulting from abnormal contraction or relaxation of the 
vascular muscles are, for example, a person's growing 
pallid, or blushing, and the corresponding sensations of 
cold and warmth. 

Two other concepts relating to the emotional life deserve 
to be mentioned, temperament and passion. Tempera- 



172 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

ments are inherited tendencies of the life of feeling in 
special directions. Since ancient times four have been 
distinguished: the sanguine, bilious (choleric), melan- 
cholic (atrabilious), phlegmatic (lymphatic). The ancients 
held that temperament is conditioned on the predominance 
of one of the four humors, the blood, lymph, yellow bile, 
and black bile. This is of course pure speculation of 
a prescientific period. But the distinction of the four 
classes agrees well with common observation, although 
mixed forms of temperament are more common than the 
pure types. People are either optimistically or pessi- 
mistically inclined. The sanguine and the phlegmatic 
are the optimists, the bilious and the melancholic the 
pessimists. On the other hand, some people are excitable, 
impetuous, others are not easily aroused. The sanguine 
and the bilious are quickly excited, the melancholic and 
the phlegmatic are calm and sluggish. 

Passions are acquired dispositions toward special kinds 
of pleasant experiences. We might say that they are fore- 
seeing, voluntary emotions. We speak of the passion of 
the gambler, the smoker, the collector, the lover. One 
may also compare an emotion with an acute disease, a 
passion with a chronic disease. Animals, too, possess emo- 
tions, as joy, fear, and rage. But it seems that they are 
not sufficiently capable of anticipating emotions to be said 
to possess passions, 

QUESTIONS 

i86. How are emotions defined? 

187. How does an emotion influence coherent thought? 

188. How are moods defined? 

189. Mention a number of moods and an equal number of emotions, 
each comparable to one of the moods. 



COMPLICATIONS OF WILLING 1 73 

190. What four classes of motor activities characteristic of emotions 
are distinguished in the text ? 

191. What motor activities are called expressions? 

192. Give examples of expressions of emotion. 

193. Give examples of motor activities which are not expressions of 
emotion, but nevertheless of much significance for the subject's experi- 
ence of an emotion. 

194. What is temperament? 

195. What is a passion? 



§21. Complications OF Willing 

We have shown in an earlier chapter how voluntary — 
that is, foreseeing — actions develop out of instincts. 
Sensations result from the instinctive action, are associated 
with those other impressions which called forth the instinc- 
tive response, can then be reproduced by them, and can 
themselves produce the action. When an action is thus 
foreseen, it is called voluntary. Such simple voluntary 
actions are then combined into complicated groups and 
chain-like progressions. The conscious result of the 
first movement calls up the idea of a further movement, 
its execution that of a third movement, and so on. Serial 
activities of this kind often go on for a long time ; for 
example, walking, eating, dressing, writing, sewing, rowing. 
As experience of the relations between the external things 
and practice in the performance advance, such serial ac- 
tions become more and more perfect in several respects. 
Their conscious anticipation is more and more extended, 
so that they may be adapted to very remote consequences, 
the occurrence of which is not expected until days or 
weeks afterward. They are more and more refined in that 
they adjust themselves accurately in direction, speed, and 
force to the special circumstances of each case. They are 



174 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

performed in less time and more economically; all detail 
movements which are either wrong or merely superfluous 
come to be entirely omitted. 

That the conscious processes in voluntary movements 
tend toward simplification has been mentioned in § lo. 
A whole series of movements, which was originally per- 
formed by each movement being consciously anticipated 
in order, is now performed without further conscious- 
ness as soon as the series has once begun. One fact, how- 
ever, is highly interesting in this connection because it 
shows how the several movements of the series are actually 
caused. Although consciousness of all those anticipations 
of the movements is no longer required, the physiological 
sensory functions must run their course in the normal 
order or disturbances occur in the movement. This may 
be demonstrated in an animal by cutting all the sensory 
nerves of a limb, but carefully leaving all the motor nerves 
intact. The limb nevertheless appears paralyzed. A simi- 
lar case in man has been described by Strümpell. A 
workman received a knife wound in the spinal cord. Com- 
plete recovery occurred, with the exception that the right 
hand and lower arm remained perfectly anesthetic : no 
kind of cutaneous or organic sensation was any longer 
perceived. The muscles of the hand and arm functioned 
almost normally. But movements, even very moderately 
complicated, could no longer be performed unless the man 
saw his hand and its movement. The illustration (figure 
1 8) shows his behavior when requested to form a ring with 
his thumb and index finger. He could do this fairly well 
when permitted to look at his hand. Otherwise it was im- 
possible, in spite of his will and the muscular capacity to 
perform this action. We see, then, that the peripheral 
impressions are necessary to bring about the several par- 



COMPLICATIONS OF WILLING 



175 



tial movements in this case of acquired serial activity, 
although these impressions have long ceased to become 
conscious when- 
ever the act is 
done. 

When we antici- 
pate a final result 
of an extended 
series of move- 
ments, it frequent- 
ly happens that 
the movement 
which directly 
leads to that result 
is, for one cause or 
other, not immedi- 
ately possible. Im- 
agine that a person 
for the first time 
sees some one pull- 
ing a cork from 
a bottle, pouring 
some of the con- 
tents into a glass, 
and inviting him to 
drink. Seeing the 
bottle again calls 
up in his mind the 
idea of a delicious beverage and the movement of drinking. 
But drinking is impossible, for there is no glass, and the 
bottle is corked. In such a case the idea of the result, 
which because of its importance is being kept constantly 
in mind, unrolls the total series of ideas in the reverse 




Fig. 18. — Visual and Kinesthetic Control 
OF Voluntary Action: the Former Intact, 
THE Latter Lost. 



176 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

order. It calls up first the thoughts directly preceding 
the final result, then the thoughts preceding these, and 
so on, until an idea is reached which can be realized by a 
movement. In our example the person becomes conscious 
of the idea of pulling the cork, of the corkscrew used for 
this purpose, the place where the corkscrew was found 
hanging, the movements of preparing it for the task, and 
a similar set of ideas for the glass ; and he thus becomes 
able to carry out the whole series of movements which 
result in the taste of the beverage. 

QUESTIONS 

196. Give examples of serial activities of the foreseeing kind. 

197. In what ways are activities of the kind just mentioned per- 
fected ? 

198. What is the relation of sensory activity, consciousness, and 
performance in perfected serial movements? 

199. Illustrate by a pathological case the relation just spoken of. 

200. What rule is illustrated by the example in the text of pulling a 
cork from a bottle? 

§ 22. Freedom of Conduct 

As experience of the connections, complications, and con- 
sequences of things advances, the ideas called up by any 
impression must clearly become very numerous. Ideas of 
near and remote, probable and improbable, desirable and 
undesirable, consequences, — ideas of fit and unfit, direct 
and indirect means of bringing about or preventing those 
consequences, — ideas of difficulties and obstacles, facilities 
and openings must tend to appear, to compete with each 
other, to disappear and reappear in rapid succession, or 
merely to approach consciousness ready to appear when 
their services should be needed. We refer to these various 



FREEDOM OF CONDUCT 1 77 

mental states, according as they appear in one or another 
form of connection, by such terms as reflecting^ consider- 
ing^ choosingy desiring^ rejecting^ intendi^igy deciding^ and 
many others, all having in common the foreseeing of some- 
thing to be experienced in the future as the result of our 
action. 

What action occurs in each possible case depends on the 
relative force of the factors coming into play. The actual 
sensory impression is as a rule a rather insignificant factor. 
It sets free the ideas derived from innumerable previous 
sensory impressions. The resulting action is then nearly 
always extremely different from the instinctive reaction 
belonging to the sensory stimulation. Such actions, result- 
ing essentially from factors within the mind, not from 
external factors which happen to impress the mind at the 
moment, are called free actions. Their freedom does not 
mean that they have no causation, that they are free of 
causes, but they are free of the compulsion exerted by the 
external stimuli of the moment. They are free actions as 
opposed to instinctive actions, which are not free of these 
stimuli of the moment, but on the contrary, completely 
determined by them. 

Scholastic philosophy — and popular thought, which is 
still largely under the influence of that philosophy — recog- 
nizes still another kind of freedom of the mind. It as- 
sumes that mind, under the impression of perfectly definite 
external conditions and with perfectly definite internal 
motives of thought and action, possesses the faculty of 
deciding in favor of the action opposed to its own motives 
and of enforcing this action. This faculty of an absolutely 
causeless willing is assumed to be added to all the other 
external and internal factors determining action or, as the 
case may be, suppressing action. Such a faculty we can- 



1/8 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

not accept, since according to our most fundamental con- 
ceptions mind is not a being added to its experiences, but 
the totality of its experiences, in so far as it knows itself ; 
whereas it is called brain in so far as it is known by other 
minds. The arguments brought forward in favor of a 
freedom of the will in the sense of a possibility of causeless 
action are inacceptable to the psychologist because they 
would make a psychological science impossible. Never- 
theless, it is worth while to discuss the more important 
ones briefly. 

Three arguments are most commonly offered. First, 
immediate experience tells us that, whenever we decide 
in favor of one action, we could have decided differently. 
We were conscious of the possibility of acting otherwise. 
The second and third arguments are of a practical nature. 
According to the second, the idea of a uniformly effective 
causation of our actions paralyzes our activity. If every- 
thing takes place by necessity, the idea of influencing the 
physical world or human society becomes meaningless. 
No one can believe in determination of our action and at 
the same time make an effort to instruct and educate peo- 
ple to act differently. Thirdly, no one can be held re- 
sponsible for his actions if he could not help performing 
them. If all actions are causally determined, punishment 
becomes mere cruelty. 

The first argument fails because our immediate experi- 
ence under no conditions informs us exactly as to what 
caused and what did not cause our actions. We have just 
seen that a serial movement cannot be carried out un- 
less constant sensory impressions are received from the 
progress of the partial movements. Immediate experience 
gives us no information about this necessity, which was 
entirely unsuspected until physiological experiment and 



FREEDOM OF CONDUCT 1 79 

pathological observation revealed the fact. Immediate 
experience tells a person who in his boarding house 
praises a very ordinary dinner in exaggerated terms, that 
he might have kept silent as he usually does — he does 
not remember that the evening before when he was in a 
state of hypnosis a suggestion was given to him to praise 
his dinner the following day. Everybody else knows that 
he will, that he must, do it. He alone thinks, on the basis 
of his immediate experience, that it was an act of free will 
without causation. It was free, uncaused, in the same 
sense in which the issue of a disease, the outcome of a 
war, the weather, the crops, are free and uncaused ; that is, 
he was ignorant of the cause. 

Paralysis of activity is said to be the consequence of a 
belief in universal causation. But surely the energetic 
and ambitious man is not paralyzed by this belief. He 
feels that he is the tool used by nature to shape the desti- 
nies of the world. How could a consciousness of his im- 
portance in the causal connections of events paralyze his 
activity } The idle and indolent may excuse his lack of 
activity by saying that it is his nature to love inactivity, 
that he cannot help it. But who would have any more 
respect for him on that account } Of course it is not his 
belief in universal causation that makes him indolent. 
The lesson from history is very significant in this respect, 
but it must not be read one-sidedly. It is all right to 
point out that the fatalistic Islam is losing piece after 
piece of its dominion. But the same fatalistic Islam also 
conquered a world and for centuries kept all Europe in 
terror. Thus it cannot be its fataHsm that determined 
both its rise and its downfall. In recent years, did the 
belief in predestination make the Boers less energetic 
than the belief in freedom the orthodox Spaniards } 



l80 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

We must say, then, that in general neither belief is of 
much practical significance. But as a guide in special 
cases the belief in universal causation is by far preferable. 
What can give more encouragement to the educator than 
the conviction that his efforts will bear fruit in one way 
or other because they must help to shape and direct his 
pupil's activities in later life ? What can be more dis- 
couraging than the belief that, whatever may be his 
efforts, they are just as likely to be lost on his pupil as to 
be effective, since the latter has the faculty of causelessly 
acting either in one way or in the opposite way ? 

The third argument asserts that universal causation is in- 
compatible with responsibility. But what do we mean by 
responsibility } Nothing but the fact that society, if it can 
do so, will punish its members for certain deeds. Why 
should a belief in universal causation prevent society from 
punishing its members ^ Bismarck writes in a letter to his 
sister : " It is not the wolf's fault that God has created him 
as he is. That does not prevent us from killing him 
whenever we can." Holding a person responsible, punish- 
ing or rewarding him, does not lose its meaning if we re- 
gard his actions as being determined by causes. We do 
not then hold him responsible for the single act, but for 
his being so natured that under such circumstances he 
cannot help committing such a deed. The question be- 
comes this : What is the more plausible reason for punish- 
ing a person, his abnormal deed or his abnormal, unsocial 
nature which made this deed possible ? 

It is true that punishment dealt out by an individual or 
a small group is often merely an instinctive act of revenge 
for a single deed. If a person beats me, do I have less 
pain if I beat him and cause him pain too.? Should a 
gambler beat the roulette because it makes him lose and 



FREEDOM OF CONDUCT l8l 

the other man gain ? Would the roulette act differently 
for having been beaten ? Am I sure that the person whose 
beating me was undetermined by causes will treat me 
better the next time ? If his actions are caused, he prob- 
ably will treat me better because the memory of the blows 
received from me will act as a cause. The instinct of 
returning blows would be incomprehensible if human ac- 
tion were independent of causes. 

But the legal punishment dealt out by the officers of a 
nation has lost the significance of an instinctive act of 
revenge. Does this fact make it compatible with the 
doctrine of causeless activity ? Would not punishment, 
under this doctrine, be cruelty pure and simple ? Punish- 
ment can be justified only if it can act as a cause deter- 
mining human behavior. Society introduces fear of threat- 
ened punishment and memory of suffered punishment as 
motives into the mental life of its members, in order to in- 
hibit criminal actions in those who are so natured that they 
will commit acts inimical to society when occasion offers, 
or when they are tempted. The degree of the penalty is 
adapted to the effectiveness of the temptation under 
different circumstances. Children and intoxicated and 
insane persons are treated in a different manner because 
the fundamental condition of punishment — the existence 
of an idea of punishment capable of serving as a motive 
of action — is not fulfilled in them. All this becomes en- 
tirely purposeless, meaningless, if we accept the doctrine 
that human actions are not completely determined by 
causes. Responsibility, social order, and law, far from 
being called in question by determinism, are, on the con- 
trary, dependent on it for their justification. 

Indeterminism, the doctrine of causeless activity of the 
mind, of freedom of a will which is regarded as an entity 



1 82 COMPLICATIONS OF MENTAL LIFE 

added to the contents of the mind, is no better supported 
by these special arguments than by general considerations. 
More than a hundred years ago Priestley said of this 
doctrine: "There is no absurdity more glaring to my 
understanding." 

QUESTIONS 

201. Give at least a dozen words all meaning the foreseeing of a 
future experience resulting from action. 

202. How are free actions defined? 

203. What other name is mentioned in the text for unfree, compul- 
sory action, a name which has already been much used in a previous 
chapter ? 

204. What are the three arguments mentioned in favor of the as- 
sumption that causeless action is possible ? 

205. What do we learn from a post-hypnotic suggestion with respect 
to the question of free will? 

206. Give examples from history showing that both energy and in- 
dolence are independent of theories about the will. 

207. Can the belief in causeless activity be expected to contribute to 
educational endeavor? Give reasons for your answer. 

208. What is the aim of legal punishment? How is this aim related 
to the doctrine of causeless activity ? 

209. Why are children not made subject to legal punishment? 



CHAPTER IV 

HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

§ 23. Evils of Knowledge 

Into the remotest distances, spatial and temporal, mind 
penetrates through the accumulation and theoretical elab- 
oration of experiences. Knowledge may be obtained of 
the names and the deeds of Assyrian kings, of the shape 
of the oceans and the continents thousands and hundreds 
of thousands of years ago, of eclipses of the sun and the 
moon, of the appearance of the starry sky for any number 
of years hence. Knowledge means power. Insight into 
the relations of things enables the mind to adapt itself 
more perfectly to them. Science and industrial devel- 
opment are the results of this advancement of mental 
activity. 

Nevertheless, it is not exclusively happiness that is thus 
gained. So complicated is mind that what contributes to 
its welfare and removes obstacles to its well-being, at the 
same time creates new sources of unhappiness, which call 
for new means, new methods, of relief. " La prevoyance, 
la prevoyance," complains Rousseau, "voila la veritable 
source de toutes nos miseres." We must make allowance 
for the exaggeration necessary to make the desired im- 
pression ; but even then there is much truth in Rousseau's 
words. Not all evils spring from prescience, but a good 

183 



l84 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

many do. Three classes of unintended and unpleasant 
effects of knowledge anticipating future events may be 
described. 

As our knowledge expands we become more and more 
impressed with the narrow limits placed on this expansion, 
with our insuperable impotence in so many respects. To 
a child, who knows little and accomplishes little, his in- 
ability, his helplessness, does not give much concern. It 
is the prevalent, one may even say normal, condition of 
his Hfe, and therefore scarcely gives rise to unpleasant 
feelings. But the experienced adult, in the full conscious- 
ness of his knowledge, of the advantage which this gives 
to him, strives to know everything, to extend his power 
over everything. And he is constrained to learn that he 
will never come near this end. His prescience, the source 
of so much pleasant feeling, becomes thus a source of 
immense unpleasantness. Highly important relations of 
things remain in almost total darkness. Not even the next 
day's weather can be foretold, not the issue of the imminent 
battle, not the bent of the woman he woos. How numerous 
are the things against which he is almost powerless : human 
enemies, wild beasts, storm, earthquake, fire, flood, famine, 
a host of diseases, and last of all the inevitable death. He 
foresees all the terrors, aware of their power over him. 
This must fill his life with anxiety and bitterness. " He 
whose eye is so keen that he sees the dead in their graves, 
no longer sees the flowers blooming." 

Other evils have their sources, not directly in the mind's 
foreseeing, but in the limitations of foreseeing activity. 
The most fundamental aims of human activity are self- 
preservation and the preservation of the species. But our 
feelings indicate that a third class of activities are essential 
for the completeness of human life, although their contri- 



EVILS OF KNOWLEDGE 185 

bution to self-preservation and to preservation of the race 
seems to be limited. The aim of these activities per- 
haps is only a training of our powers of attention, of 
unifying in consciousness a number of impressions which 
indirectly might benefit the two aims first mentioned. Even 
primitive man devotes a considerable part of his activity to 
the production of these effects — esthetic impressions from 
colors, from tones, from symmetry, from rhythm. He ties 
feathers into his hair, dyes his clothes, and constructs his 
implements in symmetrical design without being forced by 
their use to do this. He works rhythmically, either him- 
self or with others; he dances, thus uniting successive 
movements into regularly repeated groups. But those 
activities which serve the purpose of self-preservation and 
race-preservation directly, often occupy his mental energies 
so exclusively that no time is left for the exercise of these 
esthetic tendencies. Their suppression then results in 
deeply felt unpleasantness. 

The activities of preservation are a source of evil in still 
another way. Whatever pleasure they may give, they do 
not give a lasting peace. As soon as one goal is reached, 
it appears as a mere stepping stone to a further one. Why 
does the merchant earn money .^ In order to earn more 
money! The fisherman's wife in the fairy tale, who had 
been beggarly poor all her life, did not enjoy the comfort- 
able cottage given to her for more than eight days. Then 
it appeared small and homely to her, and she desired a 
castle. This obtained, it took only a day to have her wish 
to be king. And immediately after the satisfaction of this 
desire, she asked to be made emperor. It is true, not 
every one is always thus rent by his cravings : the fairy 
tale places the sober husband at the side of the greedy 
woman. But a ceaseless, insatiable longing seems to be, 



l86 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

in varying intensities, a normal element of human nature. 
When the attainment of a further end appears clearly im- 
possible, a quiet enjoyment of one's possessions may be the 
natural consequence; but even then there is no lasting 
peace, for the tormenting experience of tedium takes the 
place of unsatisfied longing. 

A third class of evils take their origin from the effects 
of foreseeing activity, not only on the acting person, but 
chiefly on the other members of society. The natural 
endowment of different individuals for the struggle of 
preservation differs greatly and results in corresponding 
differences of achievement. In small communities, for 
instance in the family, the favorable results obtained by 
one are shared by all. But as larger social groups are 
formed, this becomes impossible. The results of the in- 
dividual's labor remain with him or at least within a 
smaller circle. This is the origin of property. Certain 
members of the social group not only procure more, but 
through the possession of desirable things become able to 
hire others to work for them. This enables them to in- 
crease still more the rate of accumulation of wealth. 
Thus a chasm is opened between masters and servants. 
However, his nature compels man to seek the companion- 
ship of other men, and this tends to bridge over the 
chasm. But between one community and another com- 
munity a similar chasm remains. To steal from the 
members of another community, to rob them by force, 
to make war upon them and carry off the plunder, is the 
same as to rob an apple tree of its fruit or to kill a sheep. 
Property thus obtained naturally passes into the hands of 
the masters, increasing their own and their offspring's 
powers. The final result is the existence of enormous 
contrasts : blessedness of a few and wretchedness of the 



EVILS OF KNOWLEDGE 1 87 

multitude. The total balance is bad : there is more evil 
in the world than good. 

Of course, those who have secured their masterships 
will say : Why should it be otherwise .? Why should a 
low level of development of human life in all be prefer- 
able to a vastly higher development of a few and a still 
lower one of all the rest ? And those youths who are not 
yet masters, but feel confident of being destined to become 
masters, readily applaud. There are, however, at least 
two objections to this view. First, we must remember 
that all human thought and feeling is determined by the 
laws of association. The masters cannot help seeing the 
wretched condition of the slaves, and must thus suffer 
themselves, although much less. This interferes with 
the enjoyment of their privileged condition. But the 
diminution of their happiness on this account may 
amount to little if they avoid the sight of poverty when- 
ever possible ; and that part of it which they cannot avoid 
seeing, they get accustomed to. 

The following objection is more serious. The slaves 
are not likely to adopt the view of their masters that 
the contrast of their positions is the natural and just out- 
come of their respective endowment with bodily and men- 
tal abilities. They easily notice that this is only partly 
true. Especially the rewarding of sons for the merits of 
their fathers or grandfathers does not find favor with 
them. Their practical belief — supported by the strongest 
desires and nourished by the comparison of their own 
condition with that of the masters — keeps before their 
minds ideas of improving their lot, even of becoming 
masters themselves. The authoritative belief in the ex- 
cellence of the present status, in spite of generations 
having become accustomed to this status, loses thus much 



1 88 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

of its force. The slave class is restless and little to 
be relied on ; therefore it must be bridled. The chasm 
between the classes becomes an abyss. Cooperation be- 
tween all the members of society, though instinctively 
wished for and so necessary, is made impossible. A 
whole nation is torn up ; its resistance toward attack from 
outside is diminished. The strongest people is one whose 
motto is : all for one, each for all ; sooner or later it will 
overthrow the other. If this does not happen, the internal 
stress is likely at some time to become too great: the 
slaves rise and sweep the masters away. In either case 
the existing society is destroyed. 

Notwithstanding the happiness which our foreseeing 
activity gives us, it carries with it three classes of evils : 
resulting from the Umits of our knowledge, from the limits 
to which our activity is subject, from the contrast and 
enmity between social classes. Are there any ways for 
our mind to overcome these evils ? There are some, not 
absolutely exterminating them, but at least restraining 
them, keeping them within bounds. 

QUESTIONS 

210. What are the three evils originating from the evolution of the 
foreseeing mind? 

211. What are the two subdivisions of the limitation to which our 
active tendencies are subject ? 

212. Why does the third class of these evils not exist in small com- 
munities ? 

213. What are the two objections to the theory which regards the 
division of society into masters and slaves as entirely satisfactory? 
Which of these objections is the stronger one? 



RELIGION 189 

§ 24, Religion 

Aid against the evils resulting from the limits of knowl- 
edge is sought by the human mind in religion. When 
fire threatens our property, we think of water ; when the 
enemy presses upon us in battle, we think of our comrade. 
By analogy, when we are under the pressure of uncertainty, 
in the terror of a great danger, we think of some person or 
some power that might aid us. We have seen previously 
that primitive man regards everything as animated and 
every event as caused by motives like his own. He regards 
himself as a double being made up of a heavy body and 
an exceedingly light, shadow-like thing, a soul. In his 
dreams he recognizes clearly the independence of the 
two : the soul leaves the body, flies to known and unknown 
regions, and experiences there the strangest things. Like- 
wise in death. To-day a certain person talks, moves about, 
does good or harm ; to-morrow the same person lies stiff. 
It is true that one cannot see the cause of this change, but 
the simplest explanation is obviously that something, the 
bearer of his powers, has escaped from the body and now 
rests invisibly elsewhere. Furthermore, are there not 
those who feel that they are possessed of a demon who 
compels them to roll about on the ground in convulsions 
or to attack other people ? 

Accordingly, man populates everything between heaven 
and earth, animals and plants, rocks and logs, lakes and 
streams, the phenomena of the weather, and the constella- 
tions, with demons, ghosts, departed souls, specters. These 
beings are thought of as possessing human-like powers, 
many of them, however, far mightier than man, handling 
all those things of which nature consists in a manner simi- 
lar to man's handling of his own property. Some have 



190 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

asserted that man animates the world because of an irre- 
pressible desire for theoretical explanation. But this is 
scarcely true. Primitive man has no such longing for 
theories. He does it simply for the sake of his practical 
interests : in order to make use of the things of nature, he 
must first comprehend them ; and what manner of compre- 
hending them would be preferable to humanizing them ? 
If the things are like men of his acquaintance, he knows 
how to obtain their favor, their aid. His belief in these 
demons is a practical belief like the belief of a mother in 
the future of her son. These demons must exist, for he 
would have to give up the struggle for life, perplexed, 
helpless, if they did not exist — if the world were a mass 
of incomprehensible objects. 

Naturally he distinguishes two kinds of demons, as he 
distinguishes two kinds of men, good and bad. Those who 
are malicious and hostile bring all the distress of diseases 
and terrible events, from which he cannot defend himself 
by his own power. The best one can hope to obtain from 
these demons is that they stop exerting their evil influence. 
Man lives in constant fear of them. The demons of the 
other kind are friendly and helpful. They assist man 
in his defense against the fiends and in his fight with 
other men; and they permit him to participate in their 
knowledge of the future. They are reliable. One is 
grateful to them and loves them. In the most primitive 
stage of mankind fear prevails, and therefore also the 
belief in harmful ghosts and demons. On a higher level 
of culture, advancing insight into the causal relations of 
natural events brings about more self-reliance, more hope, 
and consequently also a growing belief in benevolent de- 
mons. Both fear and love, however, remain character- 
istic of the attitude of man toward his gods. 



RELIGION 191 

In order to obtain the good will of the gods, man nat- 
urally treats them as he would treat his neighbors. He 
must earnestly pray to them, flatter them, perhaps also 
threaten them, promise gifts in exchange for their aid, 
vow continued faith and obedience, especially make them 
presents in advance. Prayer, vows, and sacrifice are the 
means of approaching them. Soon another thought be- 
comes prevalent. In cases where the influence of demons 
seems particularly conspicuous, in mental diseases, certain 
persons show themselves much more skilful than the ma- 
jority in establishing relations with them and thus curing 
these diseases. One naturally employs these persons in 
one's relations to the gods. The medicine man becomes 
a priest. And he soon establishes himself firmly in this 
position by inventing mysterious ceremonies with which 
he alone is familiar, and by acquiring the ability to read 
and interpret sacred books. His authority, however, rests 
on his doing what the people expect from their gods : he 
must possess prophecy and witchcraft. Even the apostles 
prove their legitimacy by prophesying and performing 
miraculous cures. 

Fear and misery are the parents of religion ; and, 
although it is propagated in the main through authority, it 
would long ago have become extinct, if it were not born anew 
out of them all the time. In times of need and oppression 
religion grows strong. The churches are full, pilgrimages 
are common, in wars or epidemics. In battle, in disease, 
aboard a sinking ship, many a one learns to pray. Some 
fear or some need is always present. Even the highest 
wisdom and power can only repress, never exterminate 
these. Therefore they have always brought forth re- 
ligion and will always do so, provided one does not 
clumsily attempt to change human nature. 



192 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

Prayer and sacrifice are not invariably followed by 
success. But aid requested from human beings also is 
often refused, so that explanations for the lack of 
success are not wanting. Perhaps the prayer was not 
fervent enough, the sacrifice not offered in the correct 
manner or at the right place. Or the supplicant has of- 
fended the god ; it is only to be expected that he is thus 
punished for the offense. Or the god, knowing his most 
secret failings, wishes to test his faith, his piety, in case all 
worldly goods and even health are lost. The gods are all- 
wise : who could understand them and their actions com- 
pletely ? Now and then, when the pious continue to suffer 
and the godless to prosper, religion is exposed to a serious 
danger. But religious faith has found the solution of this 
problem, not everywhere on earth, but here and there ; and 
out of a secret doctrine of certain sects of ancient Greece this 
solution has become a gospel spread all over the earth : even 
that hope which remains unsatisfied at the time of death 
will find its realization. Man's soul is eternal, is only 
temporarily united with the body, and when separated from 
it will continue to live forever. The pious must prepare 
himself for the future life by turning away from bodily 
pleasure toward God, by suffering. The godless, who 
has failed to prepare himself, finds eternal punishment 
waiting for him. 

Under primitive cultural conditions, when everybody 
has to do every kind of labor for himself, the same regime 
is applied to the gods. They do not differ much in their 
abihties, although one can do this, the other that, somewhat 
better. They are an unorganized crowd like mankind, 
fighting each other and forming alliances for this purpose. 
When human societies become estabhshed, the gods be- 
come differentiated. There are masters and servants, 



RELIGION 193 

various professions. Complications arising from such 
occurrences as subjection of one nation to another and 
a consequent assimilation of their religions, change but 
little the trend of this development. Of greater influence 
are the growth of morality and the advance of scientific 
knowledge. 

When man establishes a moral ideal for himself, he 
applies it to his gods. His gods become moral examples. 
They no longer require bloody sacrifices, but a clean heart 
and good deeds. And since there is only one morality, and 
morality is the chief attribute of Deity, there can be only 
one God. All those great religious teachers who con- 
tributed to the moral development of religion, the Jewish 
prophets, Zoroaster, Plato, accepted monotheism. 

When scientific knowledge advances, when more and 
more of the phenomena of nature are found to obey simple 
laws, daring philosophers assert and convince others that 
all natural phenomena obey such laws, that nothing in na- 
ture depends on the whims of human-like wills. Religion, 
then, seems to be deprived of its foundations. If God does 
not arbitrarily interfere with the laws of nature, how can 
any aid come from him ? However, the need of religion 
remains, and religion adapts itself to the new views of the 
world. The highest form of religion is the outcome of 
this development. Prayer, then, has a purely mental value 
for him who prays. It gives him hope, confidence, courage, 
and thus he succeeds in accompHshing that of which he 
seemed incapable without aid. The witchcraft of the 
priest is reduced to a purely mental influence. In the 
sacrament he brings about a sanctification of the mind. 
God, far from being lost from the world, is regarded as the 
world itself, the source from which every phenomenon of 
nature springs. And again religion can give man what 



194 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

he longs for, protection from the overpowering unknown, 
peace for the restless heart. . 

But life is like a hydra : as fast as one head is hewn 
off, two others grow. Man overcomes the depression 
caused by his feeling of impotence by the help of religion, 
and immediately has two other troubles besetting him. 

(i) It is natural that of all the creations of mind religion 
possesses the strongest inertia. God is unchangeable. 
But knowledge is changeable : our ways of thinking of 
the world differ greatly from those of a thousand, five 
hundred, or a hundred years ago. Much knowledge has 
become attached to religion. Shall it remain unchanged 
on that account ? The resulting disharmony has been felt 
at all times, in varying degrees of intensity. The repre- 
sentatives of science cannot help contradicting the faith of 
their ancestors ; and the priests profess that they alone 
possess true knowledge, that the knowledge of the sci- 
entists is merely a mass of hypotheses. Bitter was the 
struggle about the geocentric system, and no less bitter 
more recently was the opposition to the theory of evolu- 
tion. During the later centuries of antiquity scientists 
tried to comprehend the influence of the sun on plant life 
by conceiving its power as emanating and yet constantly 
remaining in its former strength at the point of its origin. 
The early Christian theologists were very modern in their 
scientific theories. Could they compare God with any- 
thing else better than with the heavenly iDody on which 
all earthly life depends ? So they developed the concep- 
tion of emanations flowing from God without diminishing 
his former powers, that is, the Christian doctrine of the 
Trinity. Other religions of the time accepted similar 
emanation doctrines : the Philonic philosophy recognized 
a twofoldness, the Neo-Platonic a fourfoldness of God. 



RELIGION. 195 

To-day every schoolboy is taught that the sun cannot 
produce any effect on earth without losing so much of its 
energy. The ancient theory of emanations has long 
ceased to have any scientific significance. But the for- 
mula exists, and is still thought by many to be the basal 
concept of the Christian religion, so that the dissension is 
endless. . 

(2) Religion is a weapon in the struggle for preservation 
for him who possesses it ; but it soon becomes a weapon 
also for the others. It is a weapon for the priest, who 
uses it as the physician uses his knowledge to make a 
living. There would be little trouble on this account. But 
religion is, naturally and unfortunately, a mighty weapon 
in the hands of the masters defending their positions 
against the slaves. Religion gives peace, quiescence, to 
the human heart. Religion perhaps teaches that the 
splendor of wealth is insignificant, worthless ; that the poor 
are better off in the future, eternal life, than those who are 
now rich. ReUgion perhaps even teaches that those who 
do not believe this will be severely punished in the next 
life. This is not the original meaning of the doctrine — 
that the wretched should remain wretched ; it was meant 
merely to comfort them in their distress. But the doc- 
trine obviously permits this appHcation, and so the masters 
have always eagerly adopted religion as one of their safest 
supports, far superior to brutal force, since it does not 
incite revolutionary reaction. " Throne and altar " is a 
motto of kings. When the servants recognize this effect 
of rehgion, they naturally tend to free themselves of it, and 
tremendous conflicts result for human life. 

Will mind succeed in orvercoming these difficulties by a 
new form of adaptation ? We cannot tell how, since thus 
far it has not succeeded. 



196 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 



QUESTIONS 

214. What does not, and what does, cause man to populate the 
whole world with demons and specters ? 

215. What is the chief division applied by man to the hosts of 
demons? Do the contents of these divisions tend to change grad- 
ually ? 

216. How does priesthood originate? 

217. Is it probable that religion will ever cease to exist? 

218. What are the consequences of the fact that prayer and sacrifice 
are not always successful ? 

219. How does the growth of morality influence religion? 

220. Is science inimical to all reHgion or to special forms of re- 
ligion ? 

221. What are the three illustrations given in the text for the diffi- 
culties arising from the attachment of science to religion? 

222. What is illustrated in the text by the quotation " throne and 
altar"? 



§ 25. Art 

The second class of the evils which we mentioned as 
resulting from our foreseeing activities consists in an in- 
sufficient occupation of the active tendencies of the mind. 
The remedy is found in art, in the enjoyment of works of 
art. 

A work of art may cause a pleasant feeling by inciting 
any of a large number of mental activities. Beyond giv- 
ing pleasure it has no purpose. Choice articles of food, 
new clothes, a profession yielding a good income, give us 
pleasure through their odor, their look, through the stand- 
ing they give us in good society. But they please us also, 
and indeed chiefly, through their purposes : we need them 
for our existence. Because of their purposes they do 
not give us pure pleasure : they make us want better food, 
better clothes, a better position. A work of art, on the 



ART 197 

other hand, may in some way further our life ; but he who 
enjoys it is not aware of such a furtherance. He sees no 
purpose in it. He experiences a bliss of heaven, not 
pleasures of the world. The purpose of art consists in 
its own unity ; it does not draw us away from where we 
are. It gives us rest while it keeps us active. The pleas- 
ure resulting from this kind of activity is called esthetic 
pleasure. 

Many are the origins of art. Religion is doubtless one 
of them. Primitive man conceived of some of the most 
important of his demons as having their seats in certain 
species of animals. The possession of these animals gives 
witchcraft. But it is difficult to carry them about, and 
killing them is of course out of the question. Primitive 
reasoning then accepted an image, a picture, as having 
about the same effectiveness. So man came to carve such 
pictures on his weapons to make them stronger, to carry 
them hung around his neck to protect him, to make idols 
of his gods which he could visibly reward or punish. The 
pleasure of seeing these .images then gave them a value 
separate from their religious applications. Yet pictures 
of the virgin and of saints still continue to be used for the 
earlier purpose. When thus beginning to be separated 
from religion, art became again attached to it ; for man, 
enjoying pictures, offered them as presents to his gods, so 
that they, too, might enjoy them. The subject of represen- 
tation was naturally the gods themselves, the most sublime 
subject known to man. 

Another origin of art is play. We said that play is that 
mass of instincts, common to man and animals, which 
brings about an exercise of the capacities necessary for 
preservation at a time when no special purposes demand 
such exercise. In this absence of a special purpose consists 



198 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

the ultimate relation of play and art. But play is not iden- 
tical with art, because it is still too serious a matter. The 
boy who plays robber and police is not like an actor play- 
ing the role of a robber. He really is the robber so far as 
the advantages, the freedom, and the power of a robber are 
concerned; and he enjoys these advantages, while the 
actor does not even think of them. The actor, even while 
playing the role of a king, desires to play the king, not to 
be the king. Play, that is, the instinctive activity of play, 
is intermediate between art and life, a gateway to the 
former. 

There are still further sources of art. After having 
been successful in his struggle, when he has some leisure, 
man observes that many things which he uses as weapons, 
as tools, for food, and so on, are capable of giving him 
pleasure quite aside from their practical significance. He 
therefore obtains these things for their own sake. He col- 
lects brilliantly colored feathers, glittering stones and 
pearls. The instinctive reactions upon pleasant experi- 
ences are discovered to be pleasant themselves. They 
are voluntarily repeated. Thus dance and song origi- 
nate. In a similar manner, from the descriptions of ordi- 
nary life, tales takes their origin. Symmetry and rhythm 
are discovered and become of the greatest importance for 
the various arts. In spite of the manifoldness of its origin 
and its application, we may speak of art in the singular, 
because all the different arts have this in common, that 
they give joy without serving any conscious purpose. 

In every art three factors may be distinguished on 
which the feeling aroused in us depends : the subject-mat- 
ter or content, the form, and the personal significance. If 
the work of art is a picture, it may represent a battle or a 
landscape; if a poem, the wanderings of Ulysses or the 



ART 199 

story of the Erlking; if music, a waltz or a funeral 
march. This subject-matter is given a particular form or 
structure. The twelve disciples of the Last Supper may 
be placed in a simple row or arranged in groups of various 
kinds. A church may be built in Roman or Gothic style. 
Meter and rhyme differ in various poems. Music may be 
harmonized in many different ways. All this refers to the 
form of art. The third factor, the personal significance, 
may be illustrated by the different moods which speak to 
us from pictures of the same subject-matter and similar 
form, also by the technique chosen by the painter. The 
picture may appear to me as an assembly of Jewish fisher- 
men or as an historical act in which the disciples of the 
Lord and he himself take part. 

Much could be said about all this in detail. Some im- 
portant insight into the relation of the different factors 
can be obtained from a discussion of the first one, the sub- 
ject-matter. How does the artist succeed in giving us, 
through his subject-matter, pleasure independent of and 
free from any consciousness of purpose.? Two ways are 
open to him. The first appears most clearly in music. It 
consists in using contents which play no part in the world 
of needs. Musical tones, sung or produced by instruments, 
do not contribute to the preservation of man ; and there- 
fore they do not incite our desire. However, when prop- 
erly combined, they are capable of arousing the most 
varied and intense feelings, moods, emotions. They are 
thus especially adapted to serve as material, as contents, 
of a work of art. 

The second way open to the artist consists in imitation. 
It prevails in painting and sculpture, and one may say 
also in poetry. The contents of these arts, that is, the sub- 
jects described, are indeed things which arouse our desires. 



200 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

But the desire is cut short through imitation. Not the 
real things, but only descriptions of them, are furnished 
us. Their affective value is not diminished thereby. It is 
true, the feelings depending on the consciousness of pur- 
pose are lost; but the rest of the feelings attain thus a 
purity and intensity all the greater. We scarcely enjoy 
meeting a robber on the highway ; on the stage or in a 
novel we enjoy it the more. The real rug gives me feel- 
ings of a mixed kind when I think of its price and its dura- 
bility; the painted rug gives me only pleasure. Since 
imitation is so conspicuous in the three arts of painting, 
sculpture, and poetry, it has been mistaken to be the aim 
of our artistic activity, whereas it is only a means to an 
end, to the production of pleasure free from desire. ,To 
understand this still more clearly, we must give attention 
to three aspects of the problem of imitation. 

First, imitation must be as true to nature as possible. 
Feelings are to be aroused. These feehngs are originally 
attached to the real things. It is clear, then, that they will 
be aroused the more readily, the more similar the work of 
art is made to reality. A disagreement with nature causes 
not merely a weakening of the pleasant feeling, but an un- 
pleasant feeling, a protest against the artist's intentionally 
disforming nature or against his incapacity. 

Secondly, imitation must never become a perfect dupli- 
cate of the real thing, to be mistaken for it. There must 
be no deception of him who enjoys the work of art, for 
deception would result in unpleasant feelings. Therefore 
we separate a picture from its surroundings by a frame, 
place a statue on a pedestal, let a drama be played on a 
stage. 

Thirdly, devotion to imitation must not lead the artist to 
neglect the other properties of the work which make it 



ART 201 

significant for our life of feeling. A work of art is always 
a compromise. Nature gives us not only what is signifi- 
cant, but also what is insignificant or even disgusting. The 
subject-matter must therefore be worked over ; that which 
is of positive value must be emphasized, even exaggerated. 
Nature usually presents a confusing multitude of details. 
Mind, for its enjoyment, needs a unitary structure made 
up of a multitude of details. The artist therefore must, 
whenever this is necessary, reconstruct nature in order 
to insure unity of perception. Imitation must often be 
adapted to special circumstances. A lion among allegorical 
figures as a symbol of might cannot be represented as an 
exact imitation of the lion of the desert. The real lion is 
a dangerous beast, a big cat. The symbolical lion must 
agree with a certain traditional style. Nature is replete 
with the insignificant, the individual, the momentary; 
mind longs for the significant, the general, the eternal. 
The highest art is found where the artist has been able to 
reach a maximum of the total effect of all the simultaneous 
factors. 

Religion would be more easily understood, were it not for 
the many forms under which the single need is satisfied ac- 
cording to circumstancesi Art, too, would be more easily 
understood, if the factors contributing toward the same 
end were less numerous. Each of them is regarded by 
some as the essential or exclusive basis of art. It is not 
difficult to explain this. The people at large naturally 
take most interest in the subject-matter, perhaps also in 
the technical ability of the artist. The musician, knowing 
that form is the main factor in his art, is apt to generalize 
and to regard form everywhere as the essential element. 
The painter or sculptor — observing how other artists give 
artistic values to the most varied subjects, perhaps feeling 



202 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

himself able to raise any subject, however selected, into the 
realm of art — may be inclined to think of art as an in- 
stitution for the employment of the creative energy of 
those whose talents tend in this direction. Each one 
gives attention to that aspect of the whole problem which 
especially concerns him. He overlooks its other aspects. 

Not every species of art permits an equal development 
of all the different factors of art in general. For example, 
in handicraft and in architecture the work as a material 
thing serves a practical purpose ; as a work of art it serves 
esthetic enjoyment. The form is here largely determined 
by its practical applicability. Its purpose must not be 
hidden, but appear as clearly as possible. Mind must 
here force itself to disregard the purpose and to enjoy 
the work independent of its practical interests. 

When mind has thus been trained to look for esthetic 
values, even where the practical side of the thing is para- 
mount, it becomes able to enjoy esthetically even that 
which in no way directly suggests an esthetic attitude of 
the spectator. Man learns to enjoy the beauty of nature 
as something independent of his practical needs. This 
ability has grown very slowly. As late as the end of the 
eighteenth century one reads in a book on Switzerland in 
a description of the Engelberg valley the following words : 
" What do you see ? Nothing but horrid mountains ; no 
gardens, no orchards, no wheat fields pleasing to the eye." 

One thing assisting in this esthetic liberation of the 
mind is the many-sidedness of nature in comparison with 
the practical interests of man. Every one can find in 
nature something remote enough from his everyday in- 
terests to become an object of esthetic enjoyment. We 
enjoy reading about a war in the far East, not only be- 
cause we recall that we have no money invested there and 



ART 203 

nothing else to risk, but chiefly because the feelings aroused 
by the reports from the theater of war can develop without 
interference. They could not, if the battle took place in a 
neighboring village. For the same reason we enjoy travel 
esthetically, not when we are compelled to travel, but when 
we choose it for our recreation. Standing in the market 
place of a foreign city, I see the people talk, gesticulate, 
bargain, as they do in my own town. And yet it is dif- 
ferent. There are no relations to my own domestic affairs. 
Their talking does not concern me. I do not even un- 
derstand their language. Thus I am able to enjoy the 
sight esthetically. It is true that nature rarely fulfills all 
those conditions which the artist fulfills in a work of art 
by his artistic reconstruction of the piece of nature rep- 
resented by him. But this loss of esthetic effectiveness 
is compensated by the inexhaustible variety, the never 
ceasing movement, the immense power and magnitude of 
nature. 

Thus mind turns against its own beginning. But not in 
order to make war upon itself, but to overcome evils of 
former adaptations by a new and higher kind of adapta- 
tion. 

QUESTIONS 

223. What property is common to works of art of every kind? 

224. How does religion contribute to the growth of art ? 

225. How is play related to art ? 

226. What are the three factors in art on which our feelings de- 
pend? 

227. Which of the three factors is predominant in music? 

228. What is the advantage of imitation over reality? 

229. What are the three aspects of the artistic problem of imita- 
tion? 

230. What training does the mind receive from the enjoyment of 
handicraft and architecture ? 



204 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

231. What kind of esthetic enjoyment has developed most recently ? 

232. How does nature assist man in the highest development of his 
esthetic ability ? 

§ 26. Morality 

What remedy does mind discover for the third class of 
evils, those resulting from its own activity for other mem- 
bers of society, and those resulting from the restlessness, 
the protestation of the latter ? The remedy is essentially 
a social phenomenon, and can be discussed here only very 
briefly with respect to the individual mind. 

Mind learns to appreciate and to train itself for activi- 
ties contributing directly to the welfare of society as a 
whole by actually working for the good of others rather 
than for its own good. When the social group increases 
in size, the more experienced and provident members rec- 
ognize, not by logical reasoning but as the immediate re- 
sult of experience, that brutally egotistic acts give rise to 
quarrel and distrust, weaken the ties which hold together 
the members, and make the group the prey of its enemies. 
Altruistic acts, on the other hand, are found to strengthen 
the group. These influential members then endeavor to 
further the latter and to suppress the former kind of actions. 
There are two possible ways of bringing this about. 

First, compulsion. Acts destructive to society are pun- 
ished. He who commits them thus suffers a disadvan- 
tage much greater than the immediate advantage, and the 
consciousness of this probability of suffering inhibits the 
act. The total concept of activities or inactivities enforced 
by punishment is the law. But the law is not far-reach- 
ing enough. A society of wholly wicked beings cannot 
be held together by law. Faith and loyalty cannot be 
enforced. 



MORALITY 205 

Willing may consist in a consciousness of the immediate 
act or in a consciousness of the remotest purpose to the 
realization of which this act contributes. If in conse- 
quence of threatened punishment I will the required act, 
but not its ultimate purpose, I can frustrate the latter in a 
hundred different ways. To punishment, therefore, must 
be added a second means of furthering the welfare of 
society, through actions of free will. The performance of 
acts of this kind is called morality. 

The special form of morality anywhere at any time de- 
pends obviously on many circumstances. It is conceivable 
that in a tribe sparingly endowed with natural resources and 
pressed by enemies, morality may demand the killing of the 
aged and of female children. On a higher level of cul- 
ture such actions must be immoral, because they do not 
harmonize with other moral commandments, or because, 
when food is plentiful, an increase in numbers is highly 
desirable. The Catholic church regards divorce as im- 
moral, but in Japan public opinion regards the enforced 
continuation of the matrimonial tie as immoral. It is obvi- 
ous that morality is a growth. But it grows very slowly, 
remaining nearly constant for long stretches of time ; and 
so we often meet moral commandments which no longer 
fit the people upon whom they are imposed. 

Kant has more strongly than any one else taken the op- 
posite view. Morality, according to him, is something defi- 
nite, eternal, absolute, not dependent on circumstances — 
categorical, as he calls it, not hypothetical. How can this 
doctrine be reconciled with what we have said above } 

We mentioned that actions benefiting the total social 
group are not the result of reflection, of reasoning, but the 
immediate result of experience on the part of the most 
provident and most influential members of the group. 



206 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

Errors and superstitions naturally play their part in the 
formation of the first moral rules. But subsequent experi- 
ence gradually improves them, so that they soon become of 
real benefit to the whole society. How are these rules 
then transmitted to following generations? By impress- 
ing them upon the child. Young children can be given 
commandments; but explanations of their purpose would 
in most cases be useless. They are therefore given cate- 
gorically, as imperatives supported by the authority of 
parents, elders, priests. Under these circumstances, of 
course, it is not to be expected that the children will later 
recall any purpose when they become conscious of these 
rules. The rules appear in their consciousness as some- 
thing unconditional, absolute — in their totality as con- 
science. 

One may here raise this question : Why does not society, 
after its children have grown into men and women, inform 
them of the purpose of these rules } This information is 
not given partly because society as a whole is not clearly 
conscious of the purpose, partly because it is better to leave 
to these rules their absolute character. The commander of 
an army does not explain the purpose of an order sent to 
an inferior officer. This has its disadvantages in so far as 
the latter, knowing the purpose, might improve details of 
the order which the commanding officer, from his distant 
position, could not properly adjust to the actual conditions. 
But on the whole it is preferable to require strict adherence 
to the order and not to permit reflection before its execu- 
tion, for reflection might easily give room to thoughts of 
self-preservation. Similarly, society demands absolute obe- 
dience because thus, on the whole, the moral rules are more 
strictly carried out, with greater benefit to society. Never- 
theless, the rules have their justification only in their pur- 



MORALITY 207 

pose, the welfare of society. And conflicts between the 
Hteral commandment and this purpose are by no means 
rare. The white lie, for example, has given much trouble 
to moral theorists. To the unbiased moral consciousness 
it is in innumerable cases the proper act. What com- 
mander of an army could be tolerated who would refuse to 
deceive the enemy? How could we meet children, the 
sick, the insane, if we had made up our minds never to tell 
a lie } 

Understanding the value of the (apparent) absolutism 
of the moral rules, we also understand why moral senti- 
ment is so highly estimated as compared with a mere num- 
ber of correct acts. Moral sentiment is the only reliable 
source of correct action. If we judge a person exclusively 
or mainly by his success in correct activity, we are likely 
to discourage his attempting a difficult task. In order to 
give the greatest possible encouragement, we tell him that 
it is his free will to do good that determines our estimation 
of his social value, no matter whether he succeeds or not. 
However, the question whether a man's will is to be called 
good or bad, can be answered only by pointing out a social 
purpose, the furtherance of the welfare of the whole. 
Without this the will to do good, the feeling of duty, 
is like the rope by means of which Münchhausen de- 
scended from the moon. 

The absolutism of morality explains the close relation of 
morality to religion. Religion, morality, and sometimes 
political law, are under God's protection ; the laws of 
reasoning and of artistic creation are not. The latter are 
also gifts of God, but left unprotected. Error and bad 
taste are no sins. Religion, if without direct protection 
by threatened punishment, would be found by each indi- 
vidual ; but each would find a different one, and since only 



208 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

one religion is supposed to be the true one, uniformity has 
to be enforced by threats. Morality still more needs pro- 
tection by threatened punishment coming from God, since 
individual desires differ greatly, and would never give 
rise directly to uniform moral rules. These rules are the 
product of the experience of generations, and always meet 
with more or less resistance from the individual. Human 
authority is frequently not strong enough to overcome this 
resistance. So God's protection is needed — and found 
very easily. What can a father reply to his ever ques- 
tioning child : Why must I give away a part of what I like 
to keep myself, or tell what I shall be punished for } He 
gives the same answer which he gives to the question who 
made the horses and the whole world : " God made these 
rules." Perhaps it would be best if the child were always 
told that God did not impose these rules upon man as 
something foreign to his nature, simply because God 
capriciously chose to do so ; but that he gave man these 
rules because they are needed for the highest develop- 
ment of human life. Only a will which acts morally be- 
cause this significance of morality is understood can be 
said to be truly free. 

We have frequently spoken of communities, of groups 
of human beings. Now, man belongs to many commu- 
nities at the same time : family, town, state, nation, friends, 
the profession, the denomination, and so on, up to man- 
kind as a whole ; which one is meant } They are all 
meant, but so that in case one obligation excludes another, 
the one toward the narrower circle of associates takes 
precedence. We do not approve of women devoting to 
charity what they owe to their children. But where the 
narrower circle leaves us free from obligation, the wider 
circle claims us as its subjects. One of these circles, the 



MORALITY 209 

widest of all, is mankind ; but morality did not begin with 
recognizing this. Only those are permitted to enjoy the 
benefits of one's morality who are clearly felt to belong 
to the same community. The expansion of political, lin- 
guistic, reUgious communities enormously increases the 
number of individuals toward whom each^ one feels moral 
obligations. 

But this expansion alone would not have broken down 
the barrier between one and all the rest of mankind. This 
barrier has been removed by the acceptance of monothe- 
ism. Other factors may have contributed toward this 
result. The categorical character of the moral rules, their 
independence of conditions, must have favored their uni- 
versal application to any human being. The development 
of the idea that all human beings are essentially alike, and 
of the idea of the unity of the world, must have greatly 
strengthened the universality of the moral rules. The 
development of the moral ideal, as we saw, tended to unify 
the conception of God. But this conception of a single 
God, monotheism, then gave a new impulse to the universal 
application of the moral rules. When each people has 
its own god, his commandments are valid only to his own 
people. But when it is recognized that only one God 
exists, his commandments can hardly be confined to the 
territory of one people. Plato and Zeno, accepting this 
consequence, teaching that human beings are like the 
members of one flock, introduced a doctrine new to the 
Greeks. Christ, reciting the Mosaic law, " Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy," adds to it : ** But 
I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse 
you, do good to them that hate you," and thus takes the 
decisive step. But mankind is still far from having ac- 
cepted this doctrine completely. To plunder private prop- 



210 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

erty on the high seas in time of war is no longer regarded 
as meritorious, but scarcely begins to cast shame on him 
who makes himself guilty of it, as plundering on land does. 



QUESTIONS 

233. Why is acting by free will superior to willing under compul- 
sion? 

234. What philosopher is mentioned in the text as the chief oppo- 
nent to the doctrine that morality is a growth dependent on circum- 
stances ? 

235. How and by whom were moral rules first discovered? 

236. How are moral rules propagated? What is the consequence of 
this mode of propagation ? 

237. What two reasons are stated for the fact that society does not 
inform its members of the real purpose of the moral rules ? 

238. Why is moral sentiment valued more highly than correct 
acts? 

239. How is the relation between morality and religion established? 

240. What is the influence of monotheism on the growth of mo- 
rality ? 

Conclusion 

What a strange being is man according to popular 
understanding! He possesses senses intended to inform 
him of the world, but incapable of doing this since they 
deceive him. In addition he has judgment and reason 
which help him to discover the deceptions of his senses 
and to gain a true knowledge of the world by the aid of 
principles whose origin is foreign to this world. His 
thoughts consist of ideas which succeed each other in ac- 
cordance with definite laws. Nevertheless, he sits within 
himself, the homunculus in the homoy and with perfect 
contempt for those laws directs the ideas, weakens this, 
strengthens that, keeps one and expels the other, unites 



CONCLUSION 211 

them and separates them with despotic arbitrariness. His 
chief desire is furtherance of his well-being. Nevertheless, 
he strives to aid others, to be fair and just, to mortify the 
flesh. He unceasingly strives to make himself the lord of 
the world. Still he has a constant craving for being the 
subject of an omnipotent power ; and to satisfy this crav- 
ing God has given him the belief in Divinity. But God, 
from whom everything springs, has given him also a pun- 
ishable inclination toward heresies and confused him by 
the contradictions of a hundred different revelations, each 
one claiming its own genuineness. Man's whole being 
appears mixed up. No second step is possible without 
reversing the first. No definite purpose can be made out 
in all this. 

Yet man becomes comprehensible as soon as we apply 
scientific methods to the study of his nature. He has 
indeed numerous faculties, seeing and hearing, imagina- 
tion and feeling, reproduction and concentration. These, 
however, do not oppose each other, but stand side by side, 
supplementing each other, as everything on earth consists 
of parts which supplement each other. The fundamental 
laws of human life are the same as those which we find in 
the higher animals. But man's ability to elaborate mo- 
mentary sense impressions is immensely increased: there 
is no limit to the associative and selective combination of 
the elementary impressions. Thus man establishes his 
power over all other animals and the inanimate world, real- 
izing the general purposes common to all organisms by 
incomparably higher and richer constructions. But these, 
however we esteem them, are derived from the same fun- 
damental forces of nature, only differing in measure and 
in their proportions. Mind is not like an unclean pot in 
which noble seeds are planted, so that the plants growing 



212 HIGHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

from them do not fit the vessel containing them and un- 
ending discord must result. Mind is a unitary organism 
which, unfolding its capacities, adjusts itself more and 
more perfectly to the circumstances of chance or of its 
own creation. As the same atmosphere brings forth out 
of wind and water and warmth now fertile rains, now de- 
structive hail storms, beautiful clouds above, dangerous 
fog below, so the same mind by the same natural laws 
brings forth error and truth, desireful pleasure and desire- 
less joy, selfishness and morality. 



INDEX 



Abstraction, 126, 133, 140, 151. 

Adaptation, 74. 

Affection, 162. 

Afferent, 35, 38. 

After-image, 74. 

Anemia, 27. 

Animals, 27, 37, 65, 75, 128, 151, 197. 

Apes, 27. 

Apperception, 119. 

Arborization, 33. 

Architecture, 202. 

Aristotle, 3, 10, 17. 

Art, 14, 24, 196. 

Association, 10, 11, 12, 14, 93, 144, 164. 

Attention, 11, 12, 87, 115, 121, 125, 144, 

151- 
Audition, 74, 76. 
Auditory, 62, 98. 
Automatic, loi. 
Axiom, 152. 

Beats, 64. 
Beethoven, 14. 
Belief, 152, 156, 158. 
Bessel, 20. 
Biology, 16. 
Bismarck, 180. 
Blind born, 67. 
Boycott, 136. 
Brain, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28. 
Brewster, 17. 
Broca, 21. 
Buffon, II. 
Bulb, 38. 

Caesar, 136. 
Catholic church, 205. 
Causality, 5, 7, 8, 9, 177. 
Center, 35, 36, 37, 107, iii. 



Cerebellum, 38, 39. 
Cerebrum, 38, 41. 
Christ, 209. 
Cicero, 159. 
Coherent thought, 142. 
Collateral, 32. 
Color, 58. 
Color-blind, 60, 76. 
Color mixture, 61. 
Conduct, 162, 176. 
Conscience, 206. 
Consciousness, 41. 
Conservation of energy, 45, 
Copernican system, 161. 
Cortex, 38, 40, 41. 
Corti, 76. 
Crime, 97. 
Cutaneous, 52, 73. 

Davy, 121. 
Definition, 141, 
Dendrite, 31. 
Desire, 109. 
Determinism, 181. 
Difference tone, 64. 
Discrimination, 100, 
Distance, 116. 
Dream, 142, 156. 
Drugs, 27. 
Duration, 68. 

Education, 24, 97. 
Efferent, 35, 38. 
Emotion, 168. 
Enlightenment, 11. 
Esthetics, 14, 185, 197, 202. 
Evolution, 5, 16. 
Experiment, 17. 
Expression, 105, 169. 



213 



214 



INDEX 



Faculties, lo, ii, 13, 22, 124, 151. 

Falstaff, 123. 

Fatalism, 179. 

Fatigue, 102. 

Fechner, 18, 19. 

Feeling, 81, 162. 

Fibril, 32. 

Fichte, 15, 

France, 10. 

Frederick William, i, 5. 

Freedom, 7, 8, 9, 176, 208. 

Fritsch, 21. 

Future life, 192, 195. 

Galileo, 10. 

Gall, 29. 

Ganglion cell, 30, 32, 38, 80. 

Generalization, 126, 128, 134. 

Goethe, 14,62. 

Gray matter, 33, 39. 

Greece, 192. 

Greenwich, 20. 

Hallucination, 79. 
Handicraft, 202. 
Harmony, 68. 
Helmholtz, 17, ^(i. 
Heraclitus, 3. 
Herbart, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19. 
Herod, 137. 
Hitzig, 21. 

Hobbes, 8, 9, 10, 17. 
Hume, 10. 
Hypnosis, 179. 
Hysteria, 29. 

Ideation, 123. 

Illusion, 120. 

Imagery, 98, 128. 

Imagination, 78, 115, 124, 151. 

Imitation, 130, 132, 199. 

Indeterminism, 181. 

Insane, 143. 

Instinct, 85, 91, 101, 107, 109, no, 130, 

171, 173, 180, 197. 
Intelligence, 27, 148. 
Interest, 89. 

James, 170. 
Japan, 205. 



Jewish prophets, 193. 
Judgment, 142. 

Kant, 13, 15, 205. 

Kinesthetic, 51, 52, 67, 86, 91, 98, 108, 

117, 129, 131, 145, 174. 
Kinnebrook, 20. 
Knowledge, 152, 157, 184, 189. 

Labyrinth, 54. 

Lange, 170. 

Language, 3, 24, 109, 128, 144, 147, 151, 

155. 
Latent idea, 81. 
Laughing, 105. 
Law, 24. 
Leibniz, 8. 
Linnaeus, 11. 
Literature, 139. 

Localization of function, 41, 42, 44. 
Lotze, 19. 

Machine, 15. 

Maskelyne, 20. 

Mathematics, 13. 

Medulla, 38. 

Melody, 68. 

Memory, 92, 123, 144, 149, 150. 

Metaphor, 137. 

Metonymy, 137. 

Middle Ages, 7. 

Mind, 47. 

Money, 165. 

Monotheism, 193, 209. 

Mood, 169. 

Morality, 193, 204. 

Mosaic law, 209. 

Motor point, 34. 

Movement, 105, 108. 

Müller, Johannes, 17. 

Münchhausen, 207. 

Music, 199. 

Napoleon, 159. 

Natural science, 6, 8, 9, 16. 

Neo-Platonic philosophy, 194. 

Nerve anatomy, 38. 

Nerve center, 35, 36, 37, 107, in. 

Nervous architecture, 34. 

Nervous process, 33. 



INDEX 



215 



Nervous system, 27, 28, 36. 
Neuron, 30, 81. 
Newton, 10. 
Noise, 62. 

Odor, 57. 

Organic sensation, $6, 170, 174. 

Otolith, 54, 55, 65. 

Pain, 53. 
Painting, 200. 
Passion, 172. 

Pathology, 22, 117, 143, 174. 
Perception, 105, 114, 119. 
Personal equation, 20. 
Perspective, 116. 
Philonic philosophy, 194. 
Philosophy, 18, 19, 23, 24. 
Phrenology, 29, 42. 
Physiology, 16, 17, 19, 21, 2a. 
Plato, 10, 193, 209. 
Play, 106, 197. 
Pleasantness, 82, 106. 
Poetry, 200. 
Practice, 99, 126. 
Prayer, 191, 192, 193. 
Predestination, 179. 
Priesthood, 191, 195. 
Priestley, 182. 
Property, 186. 
Psychiatry, 23, 24, 28, 143. 
Psych ophysics, 19, 23, 24, 28, 143. 
Ptolemaic system, 161. 
Pythagoras, 158. 

Quantitative, 13, 17. 

Range of perceptibility, 70. 

Reality, 153. 

Reason, 142. 

Reflex, 86, 107, 110, 170. 

Reflex arch, 36, 38, 107. 

Religion, 14, 24, 189, 197, 207, 209. 

Reproduction, 93, 125. 

Responsibility, 180. 

Retina, 73, 75. 

Rousseau, 15, 183. 

St. Luke, 137. 
Schelling, 18. 
Schopenhauer, 15. 
Science and religion, 194. 



Sculpture, 200. 

Seat of the soul, 29, 41. 

Self, 145, 166. 

Semicircular canals, 54, 55, 65. 

Sensation, 50, 65. 

Sensationalism, 10. 

Sensitiveness, 69, 73. 

Sensory point, 34. 

Set of the mind, 94, 123. 

Slang, 138. 

Social classes, 186. 

Space, 65. 

Spatial, 67. 

Speech, 109, 130, 139. 

Spinal cord, 38. 

Spinoza, 8, 160. 

Stimulus, 69. 

Strümpell, 174. 

Succession, 68. 

Superstition, 161. 

Switzerland, 202. 

Taste, 57. 

Temperament, 172. 
Temporal, 68. 
Tetens, 11. 
Theology, 194. 
Thought, 108. 
Threshold, 100. 
Time, 65. 
Tone, 62. 
Trinity, 194. 
Truth, 152. 
Types of imagery, 98. 

Unity in variety, 68, 164. 
Unpleasantness, 53, 82, 106. 

Vision, 74, 75. 
Visual, 58, 73, 98. 
Voluntarism, 15. 
Voluntary, 109, 171. 

Weber, E. H., 17, 18. 
Weber's law, 18, 71. 
White matter, 33. 
Will, 87, 91. 
Willing, 85, 173. 
World, 145, 167. 
Wundt, 23. 

Zeno, 209. 
Zoroaster, 193. 



